Troye Sivan Share The Experience of Being Gay and Out and The Power it Gives You
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| Troye Siwan (Don't believe the saint emojis he added on this pic) |
Troye Sivan is pop’s greatest hope for the future. His horny and hedonistic new single My My My! is already the year’s best, and its accompanying video – all heaving torsos, wet-look hair and more strutting than a Victoria’s Secret runway show – screams “superstar” in big neon letters. In person, 22-year-old Sivan, like that other modern-day superstar Lorde, is a softly spoken, hugely intelligent over-thinker. But the Troye Sivan of My My My! is the epitome of what 2018 needs: a star sashaying in a billowing shirt, frayed denim and tight white vest, singing a synthpop explosion of a song about sex from a male perspective that doesn’t make you want to bathe in bleach immediately after hearing it. While Justin Timberlake wonders what his lady friend is going to do “with all that meat” (pop it in the freezer?) on comeback single Filthy, and Jason Derulo literally equates women with animals in his video for Tip Toe, My My My! is a universal, celebratory rush saturated in playful lust.
While the single doesn’t use male pronouns, Sivan – who, unlike some of his peers, actually seems as obsessed with pop as his own fans are – was adamant it should still reflect who he was.
“I wanted to make the song sound gay, down to the production, by paying homage to a certain clap sound in an old Madonna song,” he explains on the phone from LA, to which he’s recently relocated from Perth, Australia. “Also, in the video there are shirtless guys, but they’re not touching each other – I didn’t want anybody to be like, ‘This video makes me uncomfortable because it’s gay.’” There’s a pause. “But at the same time it’s sooooo gay.” One of the shirtless guys not touching anyone is porn star and model Brody Blomqvist (AKA Justin Brody). Was Sivan involved in casting? “I was, but in my defence I just thought he had a really great … look.”
While the videos for his debut – the elegant electro-pop record, 2015’s Blue Neighbourhood – featured nascent love stories gone wrong, or footage from LGBTQ history, My My My! feels like a coming-of-age moment, not unlike Lorde’s personality-packed Green Light video from 2017. Director Grant Singer, responsible for both, agrees that Sivan represents the perfect pop star for today. “I don’t think there’s anyone quite like him,” he says. “He’s a special and rare talent.”
With straight male sexuality in pop rightfully under more scrutiny post-#MeToo, My My My!’s central conceit feels more prescient than ever.
“It’s a confidence and an attitude that I really wanted to explore,” says Sivan. “It’s that feeling where you go out with your friends and you can feel that sense of community when a bunch of people who have probably been through some rough times come together and are enjoying moving however they want to move, and being whoever they want to be. I wanted to explore that more so than actual sexuality.”
Even so, he’s also pushing the sexuality envelope. Historically, male gay pop stars have either been outed by the tabloids, tricked into outing themselves, or forced into packaging their sexuality into mopey ballads about longing in order to fit a narrative. For Sivan – who recently referred to himself as “world-renowned pop twink” – his preference when it came to who he fancied wasn’t going to be an issue. “From before I knew I was gay, I knew I wanted to be a singer, so I didn’t ever want to let [my sexuality] change that trajectory,” he states. “I’m just doing what all the other pop stars are doing: writing love songs, singing love songs and putting love interests in my music videos. I think there’s power in living openly and truthfully, while also being gay.”
As our interview time comes to an end, talk turns to a Twitter storm Sivan has been engulfed in. “Oh my God, flowergate 2k18,” he laughs. For those who haven’t followed the saga, on a recent visit to New York, where he performed My My My! and the more melancholic, Sufjan Stevens-esque The Good Side on Saturday Night Live, Sivan was handed a bouquet of flowers by a female fan. Hugs were exchanged, chat was had and everyone went home happy. Later, Sivan was pictured dumping said bouquet in the bin. For a short time, it was all pop Twitter could talk about, with streams of tweets suggesting Sivan was “cancelled”. “I feel really horrible about it, I do,” he says, before explaining that he basically had to extend his New York trip, was moving hotels and chucked the flowers in a bin.
“The thing that sucks was that people thought I ditched them 10 minutes later, but I kept them for three days,” he says. He’s in good company, I tell him, referencing the 2011 video of Madonna receiving some hydrangeas from a fan only to roll her eyes, mouth that she hates them and drop them on the floor. “And, wait, she didn’t get cancelled?” he says, mock incredulously. Well, no, she’s Madonna. “Ah, I see. Well, hopefully that’s the biggest scandal I will get myself into.”
Fingers crossed it’s not – pop needs its rebels.
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