King

Story of Song

Year & Years spoke to Lewis Corner from Digitalspy about ‘King’, Olly Aexander, vocalist and keyboard player, said: “I had wrote it at two different stages in my life. It’s about being in a relationship with someone and how that can feel really intoxicating, but that can be really addictive and you can feel like a king. You know it has to end and you feel it’s going bad, but you don’t feel strong enough to end it yourself. You want the other person to end it. That’s what I felt like I was going through over the period of a year, and then towards the end, I wrote the song.”

Release date

Released on February 27, 2015

Songwriter/s

Michael Thomas Goldsworthy – Mark Ralph – Andrew Smith – Oliver Alexander Thornton – Resul Emre Turkmen

Label

Polydor – Interscope

Chart Rankings

US – 14

UK – 1

GERMANY  – 9

‘King’ is the first number 1 single for Years & Years. It topped the UK Singles Chart with combined sales over 101.000 copies. The British Phonographic Industry certified it Platinum with sales over 600.000 copies.

The song topped the charts in Bulgaria, Croatia, Scotland and Slovakia. While it reached the top ten charts in Australia, Austria, Brazil, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Mexico, Poland and Switzerland.  It was certified Platinum in Australia, Denmark, Italy and Spain. Poland and Sweden certified it double Platinum with combined sales over 120.000 copies.

Artist’s age on release date

The band was active for 5 years when they released this song. Olly Alexander was 24 years old.

Cover Versions

Nick Jonas – Carly Rae Jepsen – amateur artists covered the song on YouTube.