It’s 10:30 A.M., and although Troye Sivan is operating on a combined seven hours of sleep from the past two nights, he’s excitedly swiping through photos on his iPhone. He turns the screen my way, showing off outfits from his “Bloom” music video, each one more colorful and avant-garde and gender-nonconforming than the last. He sports a strong red lip in the video, a wet, shimmering poison-candy-apple kind of lip, the kind of lip most gay boys dream about smearing across their faces when they’re young and sad and lonely and figuring out how to express their femininity. Sivan’s hair is wet and platinum blond and slicked in curls cascading from his skull. It’s confident and queer, masculine and feminine, flouncy and strong. And it scared the shit out of him.
“I thought that I was really far along in the coming-out process, and then two weeks ago I was shooting this video,” he says. “We mood-boarded this concept. It was like Leigh Bowery–inspired, Paris Is Burning–inspired. The entire concept is ‘looks.’ I got to set and we start, and I had to ask myself the question: ‘Does this feel genuine to me? Does this feel real to me? Does this feel fun to me? Do I want to do this?’ ”
It did, it did, it did, and he did. “[I was like,] Okay, why stop yourself? Who are you stopping yourself for? It was just so weird to have that moment at 22. I feel like I'm like super publicly gay, but that self-doubt, that's part of the journey for me. It's about pushing through that.”
His new album, also called Bloom (out August 31), pushes him well beyond that self-doubt. The ten-song set is preceded by four singles thus far—"My My My!" being the first; the Ariana Grande–featuring, Madonna-indebted "Dance to This" the most recent—each of which has been groundbreaking, or perfect, or sweaty, or achingly wistful in its own precise way. All of them have been gay as fuck.
“I spent so long and so much of my childhood holding myself back, for fear of what people would think,” he says. “I’m trying my best every day to throw that away.”
A week before our chat, a photo of Sivan goes semi-viral on Twitter. He’s in a roomful of (mostly) white gay men around a table, a queer pop music summit held in Los Angeles in late May. He’s joined by Justin Tranter (white) and Adam Lambert (white), among (white) others. The only person of color in the room, it’s reported, is Parson James.
The reaction to the photo was justifiably swift. “Love that this is happening. Sad that there appears to be no people of color in the photo,” Todrick Hall wrote.
“That was… I mean…” Sivan says, running his hand through his blond locks, smoothing them back as he looks at the ceiling. “I spoke to some of the organizers. Everyone was invited. There were definitely people of color invited, definitely women invited. People were traveling. People couldn’t make it. Seeing that photo, I’m like, ‘Fuck, I get it.’ I would be pissed off, too.”
Stumbles like the execution of this (seemingly non-inclusive) inclusivity luncheon make Sivan want to fight harder for the summit’s intended purpose, he says. “I don’t know the backend of all this, but let’s say they could only find five people who were not a white gay to invite to this thing,” he posits. “That’s a problem. That’s one that everyone at the luncheon is aware of. Everyone’s intentions are to change that in the future. That was an unfortunate, unfortunate photo of an unfortunate situation where we all looked around the room and were like, ‘Well shit.’ ”
The Variety article about the luncheon, which was published before the outrage that followed, called Sivan “the music industry’s queer poster boy.” This coronation, it is clear, flusters the 23-year-old.
“There was this tweet that went semi-viral about me,” he says. “This interviewer asked me how I thought about some of my fans seeing me as a gay icon. Right? And I answered, ‘I actually only represent a very, very small amount of very, very lucky white middle-class gays who come from open-minded families.’ I’m not trying to be that, and I don’t think that there should be one person who is that for an entire community that’s extremely diverse.”
You can guess what the publication ran as their headline: “TROYE SIVAN ON COMING OUT AND WHY HE DOESN’T WANT TO BE A GAY ICON.”
He sighs. “Someone was like, ‘No one is calling you that,’ ” he says. “It got a bunch of attention. And I was like, ‘Fucking read the article please, because that’s not what I said.’ I know who I am and I know what my ambitions are. If one kid sees me on TV or sees me in a movie and relates, then I’m done. That’s perfectly fine. That’s enough for me.”
In other words, Sivan’s happy to have people find hope in his success. “I had no template, no idea, no representation,” he says. “All I’m trying to do is be that for one person.”
Sivan still might not be for everyone. Gay sex still terrifies straight people. Even some who "accept" the LGBTQ community might prefer we keep evidence of our sexuality hidden, as if it's somehow contagious. So as gay men, we've become used to some gay entertainers promising that being gay doesn't define them. Sivan disagrees, gently. "I completely get that and appreciate where that sentiment is coming from," he says. "But, at the same time, I feel like I'm just not scared of it defining me because I think it's a really beautiful thing. So much of my life is gay—sex aside, you know what I mean?"
Sivan was born Troye Sivan Mellet in South Africa in 1995 and moved with his family to Australia two years later. He began professionally singing at age 11, releasing his first EP at 12. His debut album, Blue Neighborhood, came in 2015.
At the same time that his music career was picking up speed, Sivan was also a successful YouTube star with millions of followers. In 2013, he'd made waves when he came out in one of his videos (titled, succinctly, "Coming Out"). "This is probably the most nervous I've ever been in my entire life," he says to the camera, elongating the word "been" like he's trying to choose between a garbanzo and a navy varietal.
He speaks warmly of his family, crediting them and his Jewish upbringing with what he says was a peaceful coming out. "I super strongly identify with marginalized communities," he says. "I'm not at all religious, but I feel super, super Jewish. I can't even describe the feeling, but it actually feels really similar to being gay, the kind of kinship that you feel with the LGBTQ people. That same sense of community is there with Judaism.”
Earlier this year, Sivan told an interviewer that he wanted Bloom's first single "to sound gay." Today he walks that sentiment back, slightly. "I was half-joking when I said that, because of course there's no 'this sounds gay' or whatever," he says, making air quotes. "But then you put on 'Vogue' by Madonna or any sort of house music, and the gay leaps out and I'm ready to go. You put on Katy Perry's Teenage Dream or you put on E-MO-TION by Carly Rae Jepsen, or ‘Believe’ by Cher. The gay leaps out. There's this joy to these anthems that I wanted to try and capture."
He’s right. We need gay joy. And though Sivan isn't alone in pushing it to the forefront (Olly Alexander, Jesse Saint John, and MNEK all come to mind), he's at the forefront of the movement. He's the one who got a performance slot on Saturday Night Live before his album even had a release date. He's the one radio stations and Prides around the United States are booking to headline their shows. He's the one getting cast in films like this fall's Boy Erased, a gay conversion program drama, and he's the one fronting Valentino's 2018 Spring-Summer campaign, shot by Inez and Vinoodh, no less.
Sivan's joy is palpable, and infectious, serving as a blueprint to a subset of kids out there who didn't know there was a happy ending available to them. "Whatever success I have found has been a collaborative effort of people helping out and opening their minds and being accepting and celebrating who I am,” he says. “Hopefully, we have created a narrative in the world where it's like, 'Yeah, there's that one guy who had it all, and so can I.' "
We now must discuss "Bloom," the album’s title track. He and some of his collaborators flew to Stockholm last summer for more sessions with songwriter Max Martin's team. Day one proved a high bar to clear, as it yielded Bloom's throbbing first single, "My My My!"
"The next day we went in with a different producer, Oscar Holter, and we were on such a high from the day before," he says. "So then we started this [other] song, and it was kind of moody and I kind of started mumbling lyrics. I had had the word bloom for a really long time, and to be honest the session was going nowhere. So I leaned over to Leland and was like, 'What if we write a song about this?' And he smiled and then we were like, 'Yeah, let's just do it, 'cause this is not going to come out anyway, this song, 'cause it's not really going anywhere.' "
He didn’t like the end result and asked his manager to rearrange the next day’s sessions. As fate had it, the next morning he ran into Holter, who had stayed late to work on the song. "It was completely different," Sivan says. "Leland and I looked at each other and started giggling about the fact that we had written what I then thought was an actually good song about...what we had written it about."
You'll have noted by now that Sivan hasn't addressed what "Bloom" is about.
"It's about flowers," he deadpans in a short vignette released before the song's premiere.
The lyrics certainly read...floral. "Take a trip into my garden / I've got so much to show ya," he sings. The chorus, too, is just as...seasonal: "(Yeah, I bloom) I bloom just for you." But "Bloom" isn't just about flowers. Or it isn't about flowers at all. Or it's entirely about flowers. No good pop song worth its salt is exactly what it says it is, unless it is. And "Bloom"...isn't. Follow?
"Bloom" is (legal disclaimer: probably) about bottoming (Google it, hets). "I need you to / Tell me right before it goes down / Promise me you'll / Hold my hand if I get scared now / Might tell you to / Take a second, baby, slow it down," Sivan sings sensually to his partner as they search for the proverbial spot.
To date, Sivan has not conceded that the title track of his sophomore album is about anal sex. But he’ll hint. "I was like, Can I really do this?" he remembers asking himself excitedly. "And by the 50th time of me putting it on in my car..."
He’s interrupted by two strangers entering the room. Sivan whirls around. "Hey, you guys mind if we check out something?" one of the men asks as he begins fiddling with a control panel, not waiting for an answer. "Sure," Sivan says quietly as the men begin talking loudly about wiring and electrical currents and, I don't know, joules. We redirect, pausing our more serious discussion about (possibly) singing about topping and bottoming while two outside figures have infiltrated our temporary safe space.
Eventually, the intruders leave. We're alone again.
So, Troye: What is "Bloom" about?
"It's about a human experience that I think is really beautiful," he says. "Of course, it's cheeky and kind of dirty, but at the core of it, it's a love song. We tried to make sure that it felt tender and sweet. Like, 'Hold my hand if I get scared now' and lyrics like that...yeah, it's a love song."
And what else is it about?
"No, yeah, I mean, I..." he stammers a little, gathering his thoughts. "The only reason I haven't spoken about the specifics of it is purely because sex is embarrassing. My parents listen to my music. My parents read every single interview I ever do, I'm not speaking on it for personal reasons. But I'm more than down for people to do the math and figure out what it's about, which they've all done. I'm totally cool with that. I just don't want any direct quotes about that specific subject being read by my older brother in Australia."
Yet here he is, 23 and confident and armed with an album that's explosive and progressive and status quo–redefining. Bloom is also, we must note again, very gay, though he'd prefer you to think of it as "for everyone," which of course is polite pop-star speak for "I'd prefer to not alienate any of my fans who don't know what bottoming is.” But that's to be expected when a major pop star in 2018, signed to a major record label, is giving a major interview to a major (debatable, I won't fight you) publication. It’s explicitly gay art that’s subversively gay in the same breath. It’s brilliant like that.
Sivan says he's not naive. He knows people will figure out that "Bloom" is (likely) about bottoming. "I'm probably gonna tell people what the song is about," he says. "But for right now, I kind of feel like taking the piss a little bit and like making light of it and having a bit of a laugh, you know?"
Styled by Kelly McCabe. Grooming by Jodie Boland for Lab Series Skincare for Men. Hair by Thom Priano for R + Co. haircare