ManCrush: Troye Sivan
Sivan has been working hard in the entertainment industry since about the age of 11, when he started appearing in television shows in Australia where he grew up. He talked publicly about being gay in a YouTube video, when he was about 18 – he’d told his family a few years before that.
“I just got to this place where I was so gay in my personal life, and really proud of it…” Sivan explained in an interview with Vogue. “And I was like, I want to share this with the whole world.”
You get the sense that Sivan has always had a fairly clear and unapologetic view of who he is. What’s fantastic is that it’s working for him – Bloom, his second album, topped the charts and he’s toured extensively - it’s not just the gays that are buying Sivan’s music. Sivan also picked up a Golden Globe nomination for the track Revelation from the film Boy Erased – in which Sivan also made his major acting debut. He’s a major star with wide appeal, but he does question whether being proudly queer sometimes limits his appeal.
“Part of me wonders sometimes if I would be more commercially successful if I wasn’t gay or not as ‘in your face gay’…” Sivan explained to the Homo Sapiens podcast. “Sometimes, it can be frustrating because I’m giving my all and not having some humongous radio smash all over the world. Maybe the music just isn’t good enough, maybe the world is obsessed with hip hop right now and I’m making the furthest thing from hip hop. It could be a myriad of other things, but a part of me wonders sometimes, is the world actually ready right now for what I’m trying to be?”
What’s particularly appealing about Sivan, is that he’s not trying to project some sort of hyper-masculine image - the sexual awakening that he seems to be exploring through his music has an undeniably queer aesthetic.
“Sometimes I really forget that there are straight people in LA,” Sivan said, in an interview with The Guardian. “I have almost exclusively LGBT people around me. That instilled a sense of confidence in me – that I have every reason to be proud of who I am.”
It’s hard to articulate how powerful it is to have queer role models such as Troye Sivan. For young LGBTQ people to be able to support and idolise a successful musician who not only shares a lot of their experiences, but also sings about them - it’s a total game-changer from when pop-stars had to remain in the closet for fear of damaging their career.
Angel Baby
We’re still playing Troye Sivan’s track, Angel Baby.
It’s a track that he describes as a gushy power-bottom ballad.
The video is probably the sexiest thing that Troye has given us to date.
It’s still very Troye being sweet and dreamy, but it’s not difficult to imagine that seeing the way Lil Nas X is leaning into his sexuality is probably giving Troye some confidence that his fans will respond positively if he amps up the gay a bit.
To be fair, he’s amped up the gay a lot – and we love every inch of it!
Comments
here is a talented, nice, and unproblematic queer artist and people drag him just to create headlines. Out magazine, for some reason, was out for troye’s blood that day, even to the point of not checking its facts before publishing.