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From Johnny Mathis to Sam Smith, there’s been a long line of talented and hugely popular queer crooners whose sexual orientation is only a small part of their story. But for 23-year-old singer and actor Troye Sivan, it’s central to his identity and art—which, unlike the work of so many LGBTQ musicians who’ve ruled the margins, is inherently commercial pop that a good chunk of the mainstream media supports.
Promoted with a queer-positive video streamed on YouTube more than a 100 million times, Sivan’s 2015 single “Youth” went platinum. In anticipation of the recent release of his second album, Bloom, he graced the cover of Billboard and landed a substantial feature in The New York Times. On the back of his “Saturday Night Live” appearance last January, Bloom single “My My My!” got play from every last one of America’s 184 Top 40 radio stations, according to his label, Capitol. Phil Guerini, vice president of music strategy and general manager at family-friendly, kid-pop tastemaker Radio Disney, tells me that song even reached No. 4 on his station—a radical achievement. Yet “My My My!” went no higher than No. 80 on the ultimate arbiter of pop success, Billboard’s Hot 100.
The fact that this infectious, thoroughly radio-friendly tune didn’t go all the way suggests that there may be a limit to Sivan’s mainstream media acceptance, and it might have something to do with his rapidly evolving embrace of empowering queer imagery and subject matter. What sets the familiar dancing-in-a-warehouse choreography of his “My My My!” video apart is that there are no females involved, only studs spreading their legs and leering invitingly. The ambiance is reminiscent of Manhattan’s meatpacking district of the pre-AIDS 1970s, when men gathered in abandoned buildings for public orgies. Sivan struts through the sleazy and strobing male marketplace with his arms aimed to the heavens and his clothes fluttering around him as if he’s ascended the top of queer Valhalla. It is perhaps pop’s most unfettered image of gay male sexuality since the disco heyday of Sylvester, as if the latent homoeroticism of a hundred boy bands suddenly came unshackled and exploded across the screen.
Following the “My My My!” video, a Dazed feature story suggested Bloom’s title track possibly offers a celebration of man-on-man sex from the receptive partner’s perspective. This may be true, but despite a resplendent video that climaxes with the singer in a flower-print dress, “Bloom” is only mildly suggestive and rather allegorical by 2018 standards: Had it been sung by a woman, there’d be no discussion of anal or any other intercourse—everyone blooms and yields when they’re in love. But, thanks to the lyrics website Genius and other media jumping on the Dazed interpretation, gay sex became the song’s central topic even before its release in May, when Sivan performed the otherwise seemingly surefire hit on “The Today Show.” Despite its relentless catchiness, Capitol refrained from promoting “Bloom” at radio; it missed the major U.S. charts altogether.
“One of the differences between, say, Sam Smith and Troye is that Troye’s music and image is more explicitly sexual,” says Jake Shears of Scissor Sisters, the LGBTQ New York band that scored massive European sales but minimal U.S. airplay in the mid 2000s with Universal Records, which currently distributes Capitol. “From the top of the music industry down, from the label heads to the radio gatekeepers to the listeners themselves, there are a significant number of people who are still very uncomfortable with this, who think the themes of queer-produced music don’t belong in mass culture. I wonder, though, if it’s going to matter soon. The magic of streaming is that people are finding their way to his stuff, radio or not.”
Sivan’s career has been snowballing that way for years. He spent his teens putting himself on YouTube between roles in blockbusters like 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Covertly signing with EMI Australia in the summer of 2013, he came out publicly (via YouTube, naturally) not long after. His first two international EPs, 2014’s TRYXE and 2015’s WILD, both hit No. 5 in America. The latter EP was promoted with a video trilogy in which Sivan’s character, sometimes played by an even younger actor in flashback, falls in love with his male neighbor who, after being bullied by his alcoholic dad, leaves him for a girl and, at the end, may or may not commit suicide. The plotline’s familiarity is offset by a presentation in which same-sex love is equated with innocence.
That connection is emphasized in Sivan’s next and most popular video, “Youth,” in which he canoodles with another boy. Every bit as light as the preceding clips were dark, it evokes the cast party that follows most high school musicals—casually pansexual and completely ordinary. His debut album, 2015’s Blue Neighbourhood, then went to No. 7 on Billboard’s album chart. Even in the videos for the duets that followed, a remix of “Wild” with Alessia Cara, and “Heaven” with Betty Who, Sivan is paired with guys in physical, unmistakably intimate configurations: The latter features a montage of vintage clips depicting key points in LGBTQ history as the musician struggles to reconcile his religious beliefs with his sexuality. “If I’m losing a part of me/Maybe I don’t want heaven,” he concludes.
It’s not unprecedented for pop to address this conflict: Pet Shop Boys topped the UK charts for three weeks and hit No. 9 in the U.S. with 1987’s “It’s a Sin,” a danceable but livid protest of Catholicism’s condemnation of perfectly natural behavior that takes on a specific kind of fury if understood from the perspective of its singer, Neil Tennant, a gay ex-Catholic. Framed in an unmistakably queer context, Sivan’s statement, however, leaves no room for the kind of ambiguity that previously allowed LGBTQ acts to court mainstream approval while speaking in code to their queer fans. This bluntness is pioneering coming from a Disney-approved heartthrob. “We’re huge fans of Troye’s and use the word ‘family’ with our artists, and he certainly is a member of our family,” Radio Disney’s Guerini says.
If you’re not in Sivan’s demographic, you might not have noticed that LGBTQ themes in childrens’ entertainment have recently left Tinky Winky’s handbag in the dust. In Cartoon Network’s smash “Steven Universe,” the series’ titular boy exists in a surreal family of feminist, non-binary superheroes. Nickelodeon went one better last June with Pride-targeted, between-show segments celebrating LGBTQ identity, family, and difference: Featuring adorable tweens who happen to be “kinda tomboy” or make their own bow ties, Nickelodeon’s “Celebrate Pride Month” clip is a 60-second slap in the face of right-wing demagogues who still demonize LGBTQ folks, and its kiddie TV setting makes it jaw-droppingly progressive.
What connects Sivan to this new frontier is his particular mix of forthrightness and fragility: Soft-voiced and sweetly femme, he’s the kind of seemingly frail young man homophobes traditionally torment and secretly desire. Yet his vulnerability pales against his ability to navigate adult complexities and come out strikingly sane. A carnal shift away from the somberness of Blue Neighbourhood, Bloom opens with “Seventeen,” a dream-poppy ballad in which he recounts his underage days of meeting older dudes via hookup apps. It refutes a damaging stereotype that depicts gay men as predatory monsters aiming to molest and recruit: The reality is that when you’re queer and young and looking for answers, you’re sometimes the seducer, even with adults, and not inherently a victim. It takes a Sivan, who still often resembles a choirboy, to play out this truth and dispel the myth.
Sivan’s transformation from pinup to provocateur suggests he hasn’t yet reached his cross-generational potential. Like “Bloom,” his recent track “The Good Side” was released in the lead-up to the new album but wasn’t promoted to alternative or adult radio, and consequently hasn’t yet found its audience. A hushed and exquisitely composed apology to the guy Sivan left behind, this largely acoustic sing-along crosses the teen-pop/indie-rock threshold into hallowed Elliott Smith territory, as if the protagonist of Big Star’s “Thirteen” grew up and wrote a tear-stained thank-you as a sequel. If it underscores the right movie scene, “The Good Side” may not only do for Sivan what Garden State and “New Slang” did for the Shins: It could stop time on hit radio the way those Adele ballads interrupted that steady stream of EDM beats a few years back, and deliver Sivan a legitimate smash.
Out and forthright LGBTQ artists don’t often get this chance in the U.S. while they’re still alive. They’re generally forced to watch on the sidelines while allies like Macklemore & Ryan Lewis and somewhere-on-the-pansexual-spectrum-but-far-more-ambiguous proven stars like Lady Gaga and Miley Cyrus grab the glory. Or they’re forced to make due with cult status like Arthur Russell until meeting a tragic end, when the cool kids claim them as their own. Sivan’s singular mix of commerciality and fearlessness has placed him at queer pop’s vanguard, and, like Janelle Monáe, he merits more than cover stories and red carpet coverage.
Mainstream U.S. media currently celebrates queer bodies but hasn’t shown the same respect for queer music since the lesbian rock wave of the ’90s and the gay synth-pop boom of the ’80s. It’s bizarre that Radio Disney shows more love for Sivan and his lesbian peers like Tegan & Sara or Hayley Kiyoko than most adult stations generate for Monáe or Perfume Genius or John Grant. Like Monáe, Sivan will get coverage for his next acting gig, November’s Boy Erased, in which he appears alongside Nicole Kidman, Russell Crowe, and Lucas Hedges playing a young man enduring anti-gay conversion therapy. But he’s far more complex and defiant as a singer, one who’s made LGBTQ kids at that nearly defenseless age feel less shamed. His greatest gift is his ability to speak for and to them while growing up in spectacular style.
Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Sivan covered The New York Times Magazine. He appeared in an Arts & Leisure feature in the paper.
