Everyone, it seems, loves Troye Sivan. He already sends hordes of teenage girls and boys into paroxysms, hanging on his every word and beat, but especially his kissable pouty lips on YouTube. His channel has more than 3.7 million subscribers, and he came out there via a suitably heartfelt, nervy video two years ago. He followed with videos espousing safe sex, a tremendously affecting film in support of his local children’s hospital in Perth, The Fault in our Stars. And humour. Plenty of good-natured, positive humour.
His dreamy, youthful ardour gives Adele the chills. Sam Smith says Sivan’s melancholy, bruised-hurt voice “does things to my body”, the blue-eyed soul singer tweeting a lyric from Sivan’s song Bite: “Kiss me on the mouth and set me free, but please don’t bite.” As previously documented, even bloody Taylor Swift is a certified fan.
So when Sivan announced he was releasing his debut album, Blue Neighbourhood, this month, to follow the chart-topping electronic soundscapes of his recent EP Wild (his second for a major label), people were suitably expectant. He has the sort of clean-cut, genial, edgy but never-too-edgy image that gets record executives excited. He’s sexy sure, but not stupid, or possessed of Miley Cyrus’s captivating unpredictability. He knows how far to take it.
His is soul music for the X Factor generation – kinks ironed out, immaculately teased, and with lashings of instantaneous, three-minute emotion. This is not a slight by the way. On a song like the mournful Betty Who collaboration, Heaven, he exhibits a clear understanding of a fundamental truth. Everyone has their own blue neighbourhood.
“It’s all autobiographical,” says Sivan. “It takes place in both the suburbs of Perth where I’ve grown up, which I consider to be my blue neighbourhood, but then also in this fast-paced, crazy, whirlwind life that I’m now living in hotel rooms and planes. And it takes place inside the mind of a 20-year-old kid.”
A few years ago, Sivan’s candidness about his sexuality might have been more of a problem in some markets. In 2015, this is no longer the case. Teenage girls have never cared anyway. His songs are beautiful, stunning even in their own intangible way; his layered electropop with constant tinges of EDM contains far more depth than the work of Sam Smith (an obvious touchpoint).
Sivan and his equally youthful co-writer-producer, Alex Hope (Australia’s answer to Jessie J), have such a natural flair for capturing the sound of now that in a year’s time he could well be sharing the stratosphere with Taylor Swift. Looking back, he was probably wise to ditch the teenage covers of popular classics, although his version of Outkast’s Hey Ya still contains a naive charm.
It is difficult to find fault with Blue Neighbourhood – it does what it does so well. The pulsating melancholy of Lost Boy recalls Swift’s immaculate Out of the Woods; the spine-chilling Talk Me Down out-Macklemore’s Macklemore with its unashamed and unforgiving look at the lasting effects of homophobia (Sivan provided details of suicide prevention hotlines on its release). Youth is like PC Music without the Chipmunk voices. He also sells scented candles on his website, scented to match the mood of his songs.
Talk Me Down is the third of three thematically linked videos to be released from the album. The hope-filled but foreboding romantic slow-burner Wild is the first, and the traumatic Fools the second. The songs feel real even when they clearly aren’t – it is difficult not to lose yourself in Sivan’s world, so perfect is the illusion.
And of course it is an illusion, all art is a performance, but – like Adele, like Smith – this former child actor (he appeared in X-Men Origins: Wolverine) is very good at making the listener believe otherwise. Pop music is about trust, not truth.
There are several collaborations here. The highlight is another Hope co-credit: the smooth, spaced-out, anthemic beats of DKLA featuring an equally smooth rap from Adelaide’s excellent Tkay Maidza.
If there is a criticism, it is that Sivan does suffer from the same disease that mars Adele’s work: every song is a break-up song, tears are there to be lingered over and cherished and turned into million-selling songs. As he laments on the downbeat, vaguely sweary The Quiet: “Anything hurts less than the quiet.” Love will tear us apart. Again.
There is one major difference between Sivan and his other obvious touchpoint, Justin Bieber. On the disappointing new Bieber album, Purpose, the singer feels like a blank cipher – as one critic put it: Bieber 2.0 is the hand puppet of Skrillex and Diplo.
But at no point during Sivan’s already lengthy career does it feel like he has been manipulated by others: the manipulation, the smoke and mirrors, the illusion are his own creations. In this, he again recalls the control and stature of Taylor Swift (or indeed Madonna).
Doe-eyed, youthful, talented, the right shades of awkward and cool and caring, and shortly to be ubiquitous. People are going to hate him.
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