TROYE SIVAN’S NEW ALBUM ‘SHE’S THE BEST’ IS A PARTY AND A MANIFESTATION OF LOVE
words by DEBORAH DRENOFCI
Troye Sivan’s fourth studio album, She’s The Best, was released on October 9. After giving us the album’s explosive peak with Party, Sivan now invites us to experience the whole journey. More than an album, She’s The Best feels like an emotional trajectory, moving from the ecstatic freedom of dancing to the introspective melancholy of looking for love. Yet the album is not only about Sivan. Its backbone seems to be the women in his life, or better said, the feminine divine that has always been there for him. And that is beautiful. The songs here are not rooted in devotion but in manifestation.
photography by JAN LUCA HELLWICH
While co-headlining the SWEAT Tour with Charli XCX, Troye came across a bundle of feelings so big he did not seem to know how to handle them. From immense joy to heartache and confusion, Sivan found the inspiration for this album in the internal and external forces that paint the human experience. In an interview with Billboard News, he explained that balancing emotional and party energy was a matter of allowing himself to move through different moods, from dancing and partying, to digging into the intimacy of his soul, then bouncing right back to celebration as a form of release.
The album opens with She’s The Best, the track that ultimately gave the record its name. The reason, as Sivan explains, is that one constant in his life has always been the support of the women around him. “I’m so comfortable and my happiest, honestly, when I’m existing in the orbit of a woman,” he told Zane Lowe. Adding to the charm and the female empowerment, the one and only Nicole Kidman stars in the music video. For Troye, Kidman holds a captivating, powerful energy, and she becomes a stand-in for women’s strength and all the contrasting beauty they carry within. Charli XCX’s vocals appear in the closing chant, adding a touch of her unapologetic heat.
“Moodboards her future, it looks good
She’s done looking back, she’s only lookin’ ahead
Pretty, funny, can fight
She always knew she had something special in-inside”
The second track, Canada Dry, arrives as the pre-game before the party. It is the kind of song built on empowerment, the one you play while getting ready, absolutely obsessed with yourself. It is sensual, or what Sivan himself calls “slinky sexy”. Put your headphones on and daydream, and you might end up in many places. One of them is definitely the entrance of the club, where dimmed lights fall onto the skin and the endless possibilities of the night open up before you.
Then comes Party, the third track. Troye has said he views partying as a form of catharsis. Don’t we all? Beyond the fun and the sexiness of it all, Party captures a feeling most of us have known on the dancefloor. You look around and almost cry, realising that in moments like these we are collectively free. We are collectively Love. Sampling Madonna felt natural to Sivan. He wanted to capture that feeling of wandering with the beat, and Madonna was indeed the perfect choice. Equally interesting is why he chose Sir Ian McKellen to speak the opening of the music video. The two first crossed paths when Sivan was only a teenage boy, and Sivan has explained how McKellen, already confident and openly gay in the industry, inspired him to come out.
The fourth track, I Do This For You, feels like loneliness putting on a nice outfit and dancing to upbeat tunes. Throughout the album, Troye doesn’t really sing to someone specific, or to someone present in his life. Instead, he builds the songs as a restless search for a person he is ready for.
“I do this for you, I do this for you
I do this for you, I do this for you (Whoever you are)”
Cowboy is the ultimate manifestation song. The idea came from a dream. A man appeared, and just before Troye woke up, he saw this cowboy riding away. The song never asks the cowboy to stay. It is enough that he rode through.
The sixth track, Embarrassingly, is about pain and looking back, about being stuck on a love that refuses to come unstuck. It is the sound of replaying old moments long after they’ve ended, knowing better and going back anyway. The embarrassment lies in the honesty of admitting it still hurts.
“So, at least I can be alone
When I’m falling into you
Embarrassingly”
The seventh track, Le Boy, is the a thrilling one, at least sonically. Once again, Troye longs for a man he has never met. This time, though, the longing does not stay a question. By the final lines, the search turns into near-certainty, as if this boy was meant for him long before the song began.
“I was born in love with you
Love was sure fresh out the womb
And rest assured, you’re coming home soon”
Then the album moves to Sex Star. It captures the almost helpless vulnerability of doing all the right things to find love and still waiting impatiently for it to arrive. Sex Star is a daydream, one yet to come true.
“Got a fake tan and a trainer
Got a six pack and coconut skin
I’m an actor, entertainer
If you like that kind of thing”
Troye Meets World is where vulnerability meets confidence, carried by a chaotic, high-energy production. In this track both sides of the album come together and share the same space. The tender and the loud playing at once.
“Music meet body, body meet music
Something about your body makes me wanna lose it
Boy meet universe, Troye meets world”
FF is a tender love song. A forever love song, except Sivan does not yet know who he is in love with. He is devoted to someone he hasn’t met, which makes it the purest kind of promise: one that cannot be broken because it has not been made. It is followed by Love So Big It Hurts, where the reality of love’s pain strikes again. Here the feeling is so overwhelming that the ache becomes proof of how much he has to give.
The album closes with Lost Time, featuring Lily-Rose Depp, his co-star in the TV series The Idol, who opens and closes the track with a sensual French chant. After all the chasing, it is a grounded song, one that finally lands.
All in all, Troye set out to be understood, and he accomplished that mission. Because if there is one thing we all learn on this journey of life, it is that moving from the party to the pain, from love to the dream, is the only way to live a balanced life.
