Give and take, push and pull, pain and pleasure. Troye Sivan understands how the game of love is a roll of the dice, but Something To Give Each Other is anything but a thoughtless gamble — arriving Oct. 13, his third studio album is a self-assured, sexy climax to his extensive musical odyssey thus far.
Though he’s established himself as an actor, YouTuber and style icon, music has always been the Australian multihyphenate’s one true calling. And what has made Sivan’s music so resonant is that he has always put his cards on the table.
Thanks to the internet, he’s been in the public eye from a young age, accumulating a YouTube following starting at 12 years old. But in 2013, Sivan temporarily hit pause on his goofy, fun YouTube adventures to make way for a different type of video: the story of his coming out.
The day after coming out publicly, the 18-year-old filtered through his inbox to find a congratulatory note from the music label EMI Australia, which he’d been in negotiations with, and he was later signed. "I wanted it to be out so that they couldn’t tell me to stay in the closet," Sivan told The New Yorker years later.
The deeply personal video, which has now garnered more than 8 million views, marked a milestone for Sivan in more ways than one. The moment was an early declaration of Sivan’s firm determination to be in control — of both his identity and his creative ventures. This individualized governance manifests in Something to Give Each Other, in which Sivan discovers himself within the beautiful, rampant anarchy of desire.
Before creating this jubilant, lust-filled album in his late 20s, however, Sivan was still navigating his adolescence — and so came along his first EP, titled TRXYE, in 2014. Debuting at No. 5 on the Billboard 200, the EP demonstrated major promise for Sivan. Its debut single "Happy Little Pill," in particular, was praised by critics for its mature and brooding nature, and it glittered with hints of Sivan’s musical versatility.
Although many of his YouTube videos were personal, his most confessional outlet has always been music. "When I made YouTube videos and stuff, I am the one who's uploading it, I'm the one who's editing it, so I'm very in control," a 20-year-old Sivan told Harper’s Bazaar in 2015. "Whereas in music, it's a lot more of pouring my heart out."
In December 2015, the singer’s emotional outpouring arrived in shades of blue. Building onto TRXYE’s often dark themes, Blue Neighborhood made waves as Sivan’s adventurous debut album. Reminiscent of Lorde’s 2013 debut, Pure Heroine, Sivan’s stirring electropop anthems range from harrowing and hopeful; his explosive single "YOUTH" was particularly popular, topping Billboard’s Dance Club Songs in April 2016.
In its fearless exploration of intense, youthful yearning, Sivan’s debut record proved he had a bright future — and also further solidified a deeper connection with his fans, particularly those who are queer. Sivan, staying true to his YouTube roots, preceded Blue Neighborhood with a music video trilogy of the same name. Narrated by tracks "WILD," "FOOLS," and "TALK ME DOWN," the series spotlights a romantic queer storyline, albeit a dark one, and the trilogy visually demonstrated the intersection between Sivan’s art and identity.
Three years after his debut album, Sivan returned with Bloom, a 10-song LP bursting with loving, intense dance pop. Though Sivan doesn’t completely abandon the aching adolescence of Blue Neighborhood, Bloom is markedly more mature and, at times, more blithe.
If Blue Neighborhood feels like dusk, a first kiss under a flickering streetlight, Bloom settles into the intoxicating night air. On Blue Neighborhood’s "HEAVEN," Sivan contemplates that "If I'm losing a piece of me, maybe I don't want heaven" — but later, on Bloom’s "Animal," love causes his doubt to evaporate entirely. "No angels can beckon me back," he sings on the chorus.
From the colorful passion of "My My My!" to the subtle, smooth lust of "Dance To This" with Ariana Grande, Bloom unfurled its petals as a striking next chapter for Sivan.
In an interview with PAPER magazine reflecting on the album’s title track, Sivan expressed how he wanted the song to capture everything from sweetness to fear to curiosity. The "Bloom" music video is a swirl of budding fantasy, built from a colorful moodboard of references from Madonna to David Bowie.
"It was something I wanted to do my entire life but never really had the guts to do," Sivan shared, reflecting on the "Bloom" music video. Successfully evading the feared sophomore slump — the album hit at No. 4 on the Billboard 200, "My My My!" cracked the Hot 100, and Sivan was nominated for four ARIA Awards — Sivan found Bloom was his plunge into the creative deep end. "For me, it was just about living that fantasy and creating that fantasy."
As much as Sivan enjoyed fruitfully tapping into fantasy, facing reality is inevitable. One morning, following a breakup with his long-term boyfriend, Sivan woke up from a dream about his ex so intense that it moved him to tears. The unusual, painful start to his day translated into inspiration for the title track of his next project, 2020’s In A Dream, a seven-track EP brimming with potency.
"I would write one song, and the next day I would come in feeling a completely different way and write a completely different-sounding song," Sivan told NME. "I wasn’t writing to write. I was writing because I really needed it at the time."
The exploratory six-song EP takes the grittiest, most experimental bits of Bloom, chews them up, and spits them out in under 23 minutes. With In A Dream, Sivan stretches the limits of electropop and indie, flirting with their outskirts unflinchingly. It’s a relationship’s restless aftermath, a startling gut punch that’s disguised by its dreamy ‘80s beats and feverish dance pop. Though Sivan reflects on the past, he knows that In A Dream is the raw pulse of the future.
The EP’s title signals at being stuck, trapped in dreamworld walls you can’t seem to knock down. It’s full of sweaty sheets, tossing and turning — but, now three years later, Something to Give Each Other refreshingly envisions an escape.
"When you're going through a breakup or a tough time there's this moment where you realize that in this sorrow, there's also possibility and hope," Sivan said to Entertainment Weekly in September.
Moving away from loss and falling back into lust, Sivan taps into the euphoria of his trademark dance pop this time around, all while still exquisitely maintaining that same sonic gravity. Something’s electric lead single, "Rush," overstimulates with sugary allure: "I feel the rush/ Addicted to your touch."
For this project, there were several sources of inspiration that hit a certain "sweet spot" for Sivan. He took after the saccharine warmth of Janet Jackson’s 2004 LP, Damita Jo, and the innovation of Jonatan Leandoer96’s (Yung Lean’s) Sugar World. His spirited second single "Got Me Started" also samples Bag Raiders' "Shooting Stars," escalating and spiraling into unstoppable lust.
Even more inspiration stemmed from late night parties in Melbourne, ice-cold beer, and films like Lost in Translation and Before Sunrise, as he shared with EW. "The idea of two people coming together for a very brief moment and having this deep connection that is going to expire, and the fact that that's sort of okay — that was really inspiring to me," Sivan said of the latter film.
There’s the profound type of love that cuts deep, and then there’s the smoldering chemistry that burns fast and bright. On Something to Give Each Other, Sivan dissects the beauty of brevity, the slip into ecstasy. The glowy album cover shows Sivan, flashing an eyes-closed, candid smile as he leans his head back between a naked man’s legs.
"I was in a record store and I picked up this album called Craig Hundley Plays With the Big Boys, where the guy is smiling super, super big on the cover," Sivan recalled to EW regarding his own cover’s inspiration. "There was something so sweet and genuine about his smile that I felt very connected to him just looking at it."
Gone is the eyeless cover of TRXYE, the underwater blur of In A Dream’s album art — Something to Give Each Other is ecstasy caught mid-laugh, here and now. The rush might be fleeting, but the memory is forever.