Troye Sivan’s She’s the Best Arrives Tomorrow With Queer Identity at Its Heart

Troye Sivan releases his fourth studio album, She’s the Best, tomorrow, beginning another major chapter in a career that has increasingly placed queer life, desire and identity at the centre of mainstream pop.

The Troye Sivan She’s the Best album arrives on Friday 9 October through Interscope Records and follows 2023’s acclaimed Something to Give Each Other.

In the official album announcement, Sivan describes the record as a portrait of his life containing both the excitement of the last few years and the solitude and longing underneath it.

She’s the Best celebrates women and queer femininity

The album era began with its title track, “She’s the Best”, a song built around the women and feminine people who have shaped Sivan’s life.

The track specifically celebrates women, trans women, drag queens and feminine-presenting people, turning that influence into something much broader than a conventional love song.

The accompanying video made that idea immediately visible.

Nicole Kidman appears at the centre of the film, while Sivan moves between different expressions of masculinity and femininity before eventually appearing in drag.

The video also features Sasha Colby, while Charli XCX contributes vocals to the track.

According to People’s coverage of the video, Sivan deliberately wanted to celebrate femininity in all its different forms rather than treat it as something narrowly defined.

Party brings Madonna into the new era

The second major preview, “Party”, took the album somewhere louder.

The track uses a prominent sample from Madonna’s 2000 hit “Music”, connecting one of pop’s most important queer cultural figures with an artist who grew up in a very different generation of club culture.

The video takes an unexpectedly medieval direction, with Sivan appearing as a flamboyant figure moving through a chaotic celebration.

It also comes with a particularly distinctive narrator.

Sir Ian McKellen narrates the “Party” video, giving the whole thing the feeling of a strange queer fairy tale rather than a conventional club visual.

The song itself explores why dance music can feel completely different when experienced collectively rather than through headphones or a laptop.

A more complicated album than the title suggests

Despite the celebratory singles, Sivan has been clear that She’s the Best is not simply an album about partying.

The record moves between high-energy pop and much more introspective material.

In an interview with Rolling Stone, Sivan describes some of the songs as reflecting the inside of his mind rather than the spectacle of his recent success.

That contrast makes sense after the extraordinary visibility of his previous era.

Something to Give Each Other produced “Rush”, “Got Me Started” and “One of Your Girls”, before Sivan joined Charli XCX for the huge Sweat Tour.

That period made him more visible than at any previous point in his music career, but it also created a public version of Sivan centred heavily around confidence, club culture and sexuality.

The new album appears interested in everything happening behind that image too.

Troye Sivan’s queer visibility remains central

Sivan publicly came out as gay in 2013, when he was still known to much of his audience as a YouTube creator.

Since then, his approach to sexuality in music has changed substantially.

Rather than simply writing songs in which the gender of a romantic partner is incidental, recent projects have embraced specifically queer spaces, bodies, relationships and cultural influences.

That has made him an increasingly significant LGBT figure within international pop.

The new album continues that direction while expanding it into questions about gender expression, femininity and belonging.

It is particularly notable that a mainstream pop campaign is openly placing trans women and drag culture among the people being celebrated rather than treating them as background imagery.

The album arrives tomorrow

Troye Sivan’s official release page confirms that She’s the Best arrives on 9 October.

Apple Music currently lists the project as a 13-track album, with the title track and “Party” already available ahead of release.

After an era largely defined by packed arenas, viral choreography and one of pop’s biggest joint tours, Troye Sivan’s She’s the Best album appears to be doing something more personal.

The parties are still there.

But this time, so is everything that happens when the lights come back on.