Troye Sivan: “Everything that anyone could say about me, I’ve thought myself”

Despite the drinks spilled and the weed smoked in the video for his song “Rush”, it doesn’t actually take much to get Troye Sivan started. “I’m, like, borderline straight edge,” the popstar says, talking to me from his London record label office. “I’ll have two drinks and still have the time of my life.”

There is perhaps no pop album released this year that’s better for soundtracking the time of your life than Troye’s third album, Something to Give Each Other. “It’s about losing yourself,” he says. “This album is community-focused. It’s about sexuality and how there’s so much to love.” 

The album arrives following two of the most talked-about singles of his career; both of them viral hits. When “Rush” dropped back in July, it was one of the rare examples in which a gay public figure managed to convey the feeling of an authentically horny queer night out – pearl-clutching tenderqueers need not apply. Then, everyone’s suspicions were solidified when “Got Me Started” arrived, with its “Shooting Stars” sample and Bangkok-shot video that had Troye showing his cheeks and queening out with the dolls. 

In both bacchanalian videos, Troye rose to the challenge of reaching his final popstar form. For this new era, he wanted the visuals to be iconic, and so turned to Gordon von Steiner to realise them. Gordon, a fashion photographer who’s shot campaigns for Dior and Miu Miu, directed both “Rush” and “Got Me Started”. “I said to him, ‘I want to be able to pause any of these videos, any frame, and print it out and put it above my bed’,” Troye says. For the videos, he learned to dance, serving intensely homoerotic eastern European-style choreo. He’s got a taste for it now. “I’m actively looking at dance classes in Melbourne now,” he says. “I want to keep going.” 

Something to Give Each Other is a more mature sound for Troye; previously, songs about sex were wrapped up in flower-themed allegories about taking a trip into his garden (“Bloom”), now they’re more explicitly about doing hand stuff at the back of a party bus (“Still Got It”). The album is 90s in its inspirations and more mid-tempo than the singles would suggest. Still, this is something for the girls (and boys-who-are-girls) to get ready to. It marks him as the quintessential gay popstar working today.

His last musical project was the 2020 EP In a Dream, which mapped out his mental state amidst lockdown and the fallout of a then-recent breakup. It’s been five years, though, since Troye’s last full-length album, the sweet, tender Bloom. That album perfectly captured gayness in your early 20s, intense, scary, new. He’s been evolving, both publicly and privately, since. In public, he’s become a fashion It-girl (his style is shaggier and looser now; more CSM fashion grad than former YouTuber), created his own lifestyle brand Tsu Lange Yor, stocked at Dover Street Market, and dipped back into acting with the coming-of-age AIDS drama Three Months and the internet bogeyman The Idol. He isn’t able to comment on either project (girl, the strike). In the case of the latter, it’s probably for the best. 

During lockdown and while promoting In a Dream, “being with people dancing and listening to music at a festival or a party or the beach; meeting people; having sex… all of these things just felt so mind-blowing,” he says. It laid the groundwork for Something to Give Each Other, something of a wish fulfilment for 2020 Troye. This, he said, would be his party album. “It’s about feeling and joy and humanity…” He catches himself: “I know that sounds so lofty and wanky, but that’s what was so inspiring to me at the time.” 

It’s a theme consistent across the entire album, regardless of style or tempo. There’s “What’s the Time Where You Are?”, a song about longing for the ones you love when they’re not nearby, inspired by Troye finding connection online amidst Australia’s uber-strict lockdowns. He wanted the album to have a “global feel” to it, and so asked his fans on Instagram to send him voice notes chatting to him in their own accent or language, which he interpolated into the song. His song, “Silly” is about acting, well, a little bit silly, and why exploring your feelings doesn’t always need to be ballad-worthy. Then there’s “One of Your Girls”, a femme-focused tune about feeling loose within your gender and who you’re fucking. 

For someone who has made a career out of disclosing so much of himself – his coming out, made back when he was a YouTuber, is still available – Something to Give Each Other shows that Troye has a lot more of himself left to share, he’s finding new ways to divulge secrets and feelings he’s held onto. “This album is so vulnerable for me, even in its joy,” he says. He wanted the album cover — on which he’s photographed sitting beaming ear to ear, his head sandwiched between a naked man’s muscular thighs — to be as sexy as possible. “There needed to be something happening on my face that felt real because I wanted people to connect [to it].” 

The hedonism of this current era is partly a response to comments made online about his appearance. “This is an album about my body, basically,” he says. (The day after we speak, he posts on his Instagram story that his love for his body “makes some people uncomfortable”.) “It’s about me using it and enjoying it and enjoying other people’s bodies as well.”  

“People really love to talk about my body a lot, especially online,” he continues. “That used to affect me a bit more than it does now.” The comments have stung but they’re not new to him. “Everything that anyone could ever say about me I’ve thought in the past about myself. I’m like, ‘Why is my back so long?’ And I wish I had a bigger bum?’ Yeah, of course.” Embracing his femininity has been a process too. “Some of my earliest memories are of [forcing myself to] stand up straighter or not hang my wrist,” he says. When he was younger, he recalls a straight friend of his who would, sometimes, have a limp wrist. Troye would experience a secondhand fear for his friend’s safety. 

But much has changed. By finding this ideal equilibrium with his body and reflecting it in his music, there’s a grit and confidence to Troye now. “For me, chipping away at that over the years has been one of the greatest joys in life,” he says. “There’s a beauty in loving myself as I am. It’s not always easy and it’s not some destination I’ve arrived at, but I’m grateful that my body works, that I’m healthy, that I can move and dance and express myself. I love celebrating all parts of me now.”

Credits

Photography Terrence O’Connor