RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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See the full story · 1 sourcesTroye Sivan isn’t losing a wink of sleep over the concept of first-week sales. For his upcoming fourth studio album, She’s the Best , the Australian pop star has something bigger in mind: making something people remember.
“I honest to God could not tell you what my first-week sales [are],” Sivan said during an appearance on Las Culturistas With Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang . “I’ve just never really been numbers-minded when it comes to music stuff.”
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Instead, Sivan said the metric that matters most to him is whether the album leaves a mark on pop culture.
“The heartbreaking thing, like rather than it only [selling] however many thousand or whatever, would be if it went by without any sort of cultural impact,” he said. “I would be devastated.”
That mind-set does make sense for the singer, given the fact that his previous era became one of the most visible queer-pop moments of the past few years. Sivan’s 2023 album Something to Give Each Other debuted at No. 20 on the all-genre Billboard 200 and at No. 1 on Billboard ‘s Dance/Electronic Albums chart, while its singles “Rush” and “One of Your Girls” helped earn him spots on the Billboard Hot 100 .
The era eventually expanded beyond the album itself, culminating in Sivan and Charli xcx ‘s 2024 SWEAT Tour — the kind of pop-cultural moment Sivan says he hopes he can create again.
“I think back to those moments of like the first time I watched Moulin Rouge! or the first time I saw the ‘Dirrty’ video from Christina Aguilera ,” he explained. “Those things, those sort of moments, I’m obsessed with the idea of being able to try and give that to people.”
If Something to Give Each Other was Sivan’s exercise in “perfect pop,” his new album is cooking up to be something a little messier — and, in his words, more expressive.
“I do feel like this album … is the most potent distillation of the references, musical references, that have made me the person that I am,” he said.
Those references run the gamut. Sivan pointed to Janet Jackson’s “Together Again” as one musical touchstone, while describing the album as influenced by late-’90s grunge-pop á la Marcy Playground , with even some Fatboy Slim energy thrown into the mix. The result, he said, is intentionally “chaotic” and layered.
That was a deliberate departure from his old approach.
“My last album, my goal was like perfect pop,” Sivan said, describing himself as a “student of the school of Max Martin and Swedish people.” But after spending years obsessing over the mechanics of a pristine pop song, he felt a natural “pendulum swing” toward something more expressive.
“I made a lot of the album with my little brother,” he said. “I made a lot of the album at home.”
And he isn’t interested in over-explaining the new era before listeners get to experience it. Sivan said the rollout for She’s the Best will be “very quick,” partly because he wants fans to hear the project in full rather than spend months dissecting individual pieces.
“I think the album is best experienced when listened top to bottom,” he said. “It’s like a journey.”
That journey officially began Aug. 14 with the release of “She’s the Best,” the title track and lead single from the album, which arrives Oct. 9. The record is his first full-length project since Something to Give Each Other and his first new music since signing with Interscope Records.
The title track’s accompanying video, directed by Gordon von Steiner and co-starring Nicole Kidman, also gives a glimpse at the scale of Sivan’s latest visual world. The video follows previous collaborations between Sivan and von Steiner, including “Rush” and “One of Your Girls,” while bringing Kidman — Sivan’s fellow Australian and Boy Erased co-star — into this new album’s realm.
And when Sivan played an unreleased song and its video for the Las Culturistas hosts during the interview, their reaction suggested he may already be onto the kind of cultural moment he says he wants. “That’s gonna be a huge f—ing moment,” host Matt Rogers declared.
For Sivan, though, the goal isn’t simply to make a bigger pop moment than the last one. It’s to make something that lasts.
“I think to me personally this one is going to age well,” he said. “I think I’m gonna look back on it in like 50 years and be able to play a couple of the songs or all of the songs and be like, wow, I’m really proud of 31-year-old Troye for doing that.”
Watch the full interview below.
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