Songfacts®:

• This dark synth pop ballad is the first track to be released from Years & Years' second album. It finds lead singer Olly Alexander encouraging another man to give in to his most sinful desires.
  
  "I wanted to write a song that was kind of inspired from some experiences I've had with guys who identify straight but I've had something a bit more than just a friendship with them," Alexander explained to Zane Lowe on Apple Music's Beats 1. He added that "it spoke a bit to my own coming out journey as a gay guy."
• Alexander feels both guilty and good about hooking up with a straight man.
  
  So don't break (break)
  Sanctify my body with pain (pain)
  Sanctify the love that you crave (crave)
  Oh, and I won't, and I won't, and I won't be ashamed
  
  He explained to Nylon:
  
  "There's so much that goes on in an experience like that. On the one hand, the guy is struggling with his sexuality and feeling unable to express himself as anything other than straight while also desiring me.
  
  I'm on the other side feeling like both a sinner and saint or a devil and angel, leading this guy down a path of 'sinfulness' while, at the same time, helping him explore his sexuality."
• The futuristic dystopian visual was directed by Fred Rowson and takes place in Palo Santo, where humans have been captured by androids for the purpose of entertainment. In a press release, Alexander said: "The video for 'Sanctify' centres around an audition against the backdrop of a future metropolis called Palo Santo. It's the first part of a bigger jigsaw puzzle and my hope is that it confuses the hell out of people but also excites them in a mysterious and sensual way."
  
  He added: "We've deliberately hidden lots of different meanings and I want people to come up with their own interpretations, I'm asking people to jump down the rabbit hole with me and let their imagination run free."
  "I'm making these videos because I want to let people inside my brain and because I love living in my own fantasy world - always have, always will - a place where sexuality and gender are blurred and magic is real."
  
  Alexander continued. "We live in a chaotic and accelerating world, we're looking at depictions of the future to help us make sense of what's happening right now. This is my vision of a possible future, one that makes us question what it means to be a human."
• "Sanctify" characterises gay sex as a sacred act. "I was always aware that, in the bible, homosexuality was viewed as sinful and that's always stayed with me," Olly Alexander told the BBC. "But I really love religious iconography and religious language because it's so powerful and so evocative... so now I love to play around with that and subvert it."
• Olly Alexander told The Sun the song was inspired by his love of Britney Spears' "I'm A Slave 4 U."