798 get lonely

on Troye Sivan and being a queer icon

I first heard of Troye Sivan when I was probably thirteen years old, in a period of my life when I was consuming YouTube videos voraciously. His appeal at that time was palpable, and he quickly rose to Internet fame, earning himself something of a cult following. He made a name for himself collaborating with other Internet personalities on videos about universal teenaged topics such as crushes, learning how to cook, and shoving as many marshmallows in your mouth as humanly possible.

It’s been interesting to watch his evolution from YouTuber to critically acclaimed and publicly respected musical artist; not many people can successfully navigate the transition between mediums without some major pitfalls. Although they’ve come from the world of more organized media, Sabrina Carpenter and Olivia Rodrigo are staring down similar roads, hoping to minimize public fixation on their respective childhood acting work while still riding on the momentum of having an established name. Other artists like Dove Cameron and Ross Lynch are doing it less successfully, for no discernible reason.

I don’t think anyone expected Troye Sivan to release such an essential, well-made pop record. His previous work has been good, but not great; singles like “My My My!” got plenty of radio play but weren’t memorable past their press cycle. It seemed to me that he couldn’t quite shake the public perception of his personality as cutesy, silly, unserious. The video for “My My My!” is sexual on a subconscious level, showing Troye dancing alone with only the implication of action. The lyrics are similarly coy, revealing only the inexplicit expression of desire.

It’s clear now that he was clearly trying to be palatable and inoffensive—read: not that gay. It is, for obvious reasons, difficult to be a queer pop star, and it seems logical to me that he would not want to bear the weight of that crown if he could escape with the only the distinction of being a pop star that is also queer. There is so much baggage—from the public that idolizes you, from the public that hates your guts, from other gay celebrities, from labels, from politics—that comes along with becoming a representative for your marginalized identity that straight (and/or white, but that’s a discussion for another time) musicians simply don’t have to answer to.

When Troye Sivan’s music video for “Rush” dropped, it was clear something had changed. The video was grimy, nude, sweaty, drug-infused, and very, very gay. There are all manner of hot person on screen, doing all manner of hot, debaucherous thing. When I saw it I said:

being gay is also about being sexy, which I forgot to mention here

Troye Sivan has defied what has weirdly become mainstream gay culture—being a mouthpiece for social justice causes—and reminded us of another utopian vision of queerness in which people are beautiful and sex is free. His rejection of what society has deemed his duty, his place in the world, aligns with the counter-culture roots of queerness; somehow the horseshoe of gay respectability has led to a neutered, family-oriented ideal, especially for gay men, that Troye Sivan squarely opposes with his youth and refusal to be sexless.

Something To Give To Each Other (2023) is about queer joy and freedom from contextualization within straight society, about effortlessly transcending the boundaries of that society. It’s more potent because of its obvious eschewing of any objective at all besides pleasure. In pursuit of this pleasure, Troye Sivan has created something beautiful and joyful, something essentially queer.