Troye Sivan Chooses Pleasure Over Pain on Something to Give Each Other

When Troye Sivan released “My My My!” back in January 2018, it felt like the Aussie tween YouTuber-turned-emerging pop star was finally coming into his own. Over a sultry, thumping electronic beat, Sivan cooed about the extremely hot thrill of being both emotionally present and sexually connected to a lover. Not only was it an exciting step in a fascinating direction for his career, but it signaled Sivan’s growing interest in making explicitly gay, genuinely sexy pop music.

Bloom, the LP that touted “My My My!” as its lead single, didn’t quite meet those expectations, despite being advertised as Sivan’s “sex album.” Though it remains a well-crafted piece of music (including its fantastic, pro-bottoming title track), Bloom as a whole felt too muted and restrained for what it was trying to accomplish thematically and sonically, only marginally expanding on the soft innocence of Sivan’s 2015 debut Blue Neighborhood. The overall result may not have matched “My My My!”’s promise of carnal and romantic intensity, but you could feel Sivan wanting to break out of the chaste mold that defined his image up until that point.

As Troye Sivan has ascended further up the ladder of success since Bloom, he’s gotten much closer to that goal of widening and deepening his musical range. His features on Charli XCX’s “2099” and PNAU’s “You Know What I Need” saw him singing in a more relaxed and exuberant frequency, while his underrated 2020 EP In A Dream reflected a striking refinement of his ambitions and production style. Even his charismatic performance and sensual cover of George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord” in HBO’s The Idol managed to inject some life into the empty trappings of the series.

Throughout all of these minor yet significant shifts in his professional trajectory, Sivan has also been reeling from a breakup with his longtime partner Jacob Bixenman. But rather than follow up Bloom with another set of mostly forlorn ballads, Sivan was inspired to let loose a little bit more, a welcome course correction that works greatly to his benefit. On his gleefully slutty third output Something to Give Each Other, he fills in the cracks of his heartbreak with hedonism, relishing in the joy of being single, horny and queer.

This lush, lustful record contains some of Sivan’s most adventurous work to date, with its global influences and club-ready beats vividly evoking the catharsis of being in touch with yourself and your community. It makes for both a fun listening experience and a compelling thesis statement: Sometimes, all you need to cure your breakup blues is quality time with your friends or a good ‘ol casual encounter with a beautiful stranger.

“Rush,” the album’s hot-and-heavy opener, is a very clear snapshot of the latter idea. On its surface, “Rush” feels engineered to play on a loop at a WeHo bar or soundtrack an energy drink commercial, but Sivan is so effective at capturing how good it feels to touch another person when you don’t have any shame around it. With football chants in the “Rush” hook and its throbbing instrumental, the usually coy Sivan is engagingly forward about his desires, playing with gay culture tropes like inhaling poppers and rendering them into tempting, almost religious rituals. The song’s music video is just as seductive and titillating: a kaleidoscopic blur of sweaty, muscular bodies in neon-soaked rooms, flashes of twinks making eyes at each other, electric choreography and hypermasculine iconography like keg stands made homoerotic.

This change in Sivan’s pace and tone as a musician is immensely refreshing to witness, as it reinforces his skill-set while revealing his creative potential. On “Got Me Started,” a major standout on Something to Give Each Other, he uses a sample from Bag Raiders’s iconic “Shooting Stars,” which, apologies to gay Twitter, works for me. But even more than that, “Got Me Started” works because of how well Sivan executes his vision, employing an ethereal pitch-shifted chorus and a buoyant house beat to underscore a potent message about sexual and emotional liberation. In essence, this song fucks as much as it’s about fucking.

And like “Rush,” “Got Me Started” has a gorgeous music video directed by filmmaker Gordon von Steiner. In the clip, Sivan and his group of dancers sway and thrust against beautiful, Wong Kar Wai-inspired backdrops of Bangkok, furthering the album’s visceral evocation of pleasure and self-indulgence. The tracking shot of a euphoric Sivan running in a glittery outfit as the song builds to its final chorus is a stunning encapsulation of queer freedom. If anything, Something to Give Each Other is ushering in an exhilarating visual and conceptual era in this chapter of Sivan’s career, a true rarity in the current pop landscape.

Although Something to Give Each Other features several other upbeat songs like the strutty, spunky “What’s The Time Where You Are” and the rave-inflected penultimate track “Honey,” Sivan hasn’t completely let go of the minimalism from his past efforts. The difference here, however, is the production is much richer than before. The lovely “One of Your Girls” carries hints of Daft Punk’s vocoder melancholy, “Still Got It” is backed by a soulful, Frank Ocean-type organ, and “Can’t Go Back, Baby” makes solid use of handclaps and twinkly piano reminiscent of The 1975. These slower tunes occasionally stall the momentum of the album, but they offer quieter, more intimate counterpoints to the raunchier, more energetic material.

Perhaps what’s most interesting about Sivan’s rollout of Something to Give Each Other is his mostly unfazed reaction to terminally online queer people’s disappointment and frankly tiresome fixation with his artistic choices. In fact, it’s Sivan’s lack of concern about having the most optimal creative expression or being a palatable, perfect embodiment of queerness that makes Something to Give Each Other so innovative. Just as he refuses to entertain tiresome, unproductive internet discourse, so too does Sivan refuse to let the grief of his breakup dictate his joie de vivre. Sivan even goes so far as to dedicate this project to all the experiences that fuel so much of what makes queer life great—namely, flirting, partying, and kissing. And as the album title implies, there’s nothing more comforting and rewarding than reciprocity.

Sam Rosenberg is a filmmaker and freelance entertainment writer from Los Angeles with bylines in The Daily Beast, Consequence, AltPress and Metacritic. You can find him on Twitter @samiamrosenberg.