100 TIMESeptember 3–10, 2018
T
ROYE SIVAN, GLOBAL POP STAR, SHOWS UP
to his photo shoot alone. No manager.
No assistant. No glam squad. Just a slight
23-year-old with wide blue eyes, artfully loppy
bleached-blond hair and a voice that has captured the
hearts of a millions-strong fandom, spread out everywhere
from his hometown in Australia to his adopted home
in Los Angeles. When Sivan stretches out his hand to
introduce himself, he says his name earnestly: He’s Troye.
He’d like you to know about him. He’d like you to like him,
and his music; his new albumBloom is out Aug. 31. But
more than anything, he’d like to be there for you.
“I just want to provide for a young audience what
I felt was lacking when I was a kid,” he says, “which
was representation of someone living their life.” When
Sivan talks about representation, he’s talking about
representation for someone like him: queer, sensitive,
thoughtful.
Sivan is diferent from many of the stars who have come
before. But for him, that’s an asset, not an impediment. His
music—delicate dance-pop that has notched hundreds
of millions of streams, aSaturday Night Live appearance
and one big Top 40 hit (“Youth”)—has already won him
fans likeBloom collaborator Ariana Grande and Taylor
Swift, who brought him onstage during a recent stadium
tour date. Maybe it’s because Sivan is more than just your
average pop star. He built a platform as a digital inluencer
irst, building connections with fans who related to his
unapologetically queer identity, then used his Internet
following to buoy him to stardom as a bona ide artist. And
it’s working:Bloom marks a major artistic achievement,
evoking inluences from the Velvet Underground to Simon
& Garfunkel, all wrapped up in a sleek pop package.
BORN IN JOHANNESBURG,Sivan and his family moved
to Australia when he was 2, where he was raised in
a sleepy suburb of Perth; he calls his childhood in a
mostly Jewish community there “idyllic.” His irst music
memories include watching Michael Jackson videos on
VHS and knowing, even then, that singing and dancing
were in his future. By age 7, he was taking voice lessons.
But it was YouTube that made all the diference. He was
about 12 when he started uploading videos of himself
singing and sharing recorded musings. In old clips, you
can already clock Sivan’s preternatural connection with
the camera, and his comfort in its detached gaze; he is a
true digital native.
By the time he was 16, Sivan was one of Australian
YouTube’s most-followed accounts. He secured a
manager, a role in a Hollywood ilm(X-Men Origins:
Wolverine) and a devoted audience for his videos.
In a 2013 video post, Sivan came
out publicly to his legion of fans,
potentially jeopardizing his lifelong
dream of pop stardom; he was
negotiating a record contract at the
time. But the risk paid of. Sivan has
become a gay icon for a digital-savvy
generation, with that video alone
racking up more than 8 million views.
Capitol Records, meanwhile, signed
him—a perfect gift for the day before
his 18th birthday. “I have no idea how
I would have ever gotten started had
it not been for the Internet,” he says.
To Sivan, YouTube and social-media
platforms aren’t just tools used for
publicity. They’re the medium, and his
life is the message.
Sivan credits the friends he found
online with helping him become
comfortable with his identity early on.
“I owed it to the community to tell my
story and help some other people in the
process,” he says. When he irst shared
music videos for his 2015 debut album,
Blue Neighbourhood,critics buzzedTimeOf Opener
MUSIC
Troye Sivan is a new
kind of pop icon
By Raisa Bruner
△
Bloom is Sivan’s
second full-length
album, following
2015’sBlue
Neighbourhood
and four EPsANDREW LIPOVSKY—GETTY IMAGES