Troye Sivan’s fourth album, She’s the Best, came out this past Friday, and I’ve barely turned it off since. It’s twelve songs that bounce between a packed party and a quiet car ride, and nobody pulls off that combination quite like he does. Some of it is horny, some of it is heartbroken, and a lot of it is both at once, equal parts emotion and fun.
Before the album dropped, Troye posted a rundown on Instagram describing every song in a sentence, and I read it before I ever pressed play. I feel like this is the first time I’ve seen an artist do something like this, laying out the vibe of each track so casually and honestly ahead of release. It meant I went in sort of knowing what to expect, and I was still so surprised by how awesome the production is.
The title track, which he summed up as him being sensitive and loving women, was the perfect first single. Troye gushing about the women in his life is something you don’t hear from male pop stars very often, and the music video, starring Nicole Kidman, genuinely made me emotional the first time I saw it. “Canada Dry,” which he called “ooey gooey slinky back arch pop” about a handsome Canadian, is just such a good pop song, with a total ’90s feel and some of the sharpest lyricism on the album, which makes sense since he wrote it with his brother.
Then comes “Party,” which needed no explanation from him and gets none from me either. It’s simple, the same verse looping around before a Madonna nod, and I love it so much.
Troye described “I Do This For You” as bombastic but also manic and kinda sad, a song about doing everything for a guy and the future family they might have. It’s very Janet Jackson with an industrial edge, built on a sample of Forest for the Trees’ “Dream” with a little phone call “hello” tucked into the mix, and it feels like driving around LA past streets lined with palm trees. Jack Antonoff and George Daniel prove what a good team they are yet again on “Cowboy,” the ultimate yearning song about a man who came to Troye in a dream and who he wishes were real.
“Embarrassingly” is, in Troye’s words, a “masturbation anthem unfortunately,” which is about as honest as pop gets, and Leland and Oscar Görres hide how heartbroken he is under a sweet beat. “Le Boy” asks where this guy actually is, a song about driving around and doing things you enjoy while you wait for him to show up. Its simple, musical chorus got an early outing when he performed it during Charli xcx’s set at ACL Weekend 1. Troye called “Sex Star” the sad one, about bending himself into whatever might appeal to a man he hasn’t even met, and you can sort of tell FINNEAS worked on it, in the best way.
The mood lifts on “Troye Meets World,” which he framed as a moment of “maybe everything’s not so bad,”‚—a fast, fun dance floor track about connecting emotionally, spiritually and physically, written with Tayla Parx. I looove the horns at the end. From there, it’s two undying love songs to a man who doesn’t exist, as he put it.
“FF” is sad and sexy with a gorgeous music video, it reminds me of “Angel Baby,” and it’s so sweet, it legitimately made me want to write a song about yearning of my own. “Love So Big It Hurts” is part two, and its strings and guitar almost make it sound like a Kacey Musgraves song, and I personally think his talk-singing here sounds really sexy.
The album closes with “Lost Time,” a manifestation song by his own description, where Lily-Rose Depp drops in speaking French on a song about making up for lost time. Depp wrote the spoken passage herself in the recording booth, and it asks “Do you think of me?” and declares “I was born to love you.”
I’ve been a Troye fan for a long time, and I’ll keep being one, because I’m loving watching him grow as an artist. She’s the Best might be one of his best yet at pairing vulnerability and honesty with songs that are really, really fun to dance to.
She’s the Best is out now.
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