It’s five minutes past 6:30 PM on a rainy Monday evening when the news is delivered: Troye Sivan’s golf cart has died en route.
There are audible gasps and a collective murmur from the jam-packed auditorium teeming with USC students, some of whom have been waiting well over an hour just to be in the same room as the social media icon turned pop-star. Restless excitement permeates the air, and now, a buzz of heightened anticipation for Sivan’s arrival. The student next to me anxiously taps his phone on his knee, screen already fixed on camera mode. Another behind me whispers giddily to his friends, “Can you even imagine, like, being on campus right now and Troye Sivan just casually walks past you?”
Courtesy EMI Music
Associate Professor Mary Murphy is hosting Sivan as part of her ‘Entertainment, Business, and Media in Today’s Society’ course, and she once again reminds students to refrain from taking videos of Sivan. “He really wants this to be a class experience, and feel like he can really talk to you,” she explains. But with over 700 RSVP’s for the event, and more students in attendance than the venue can permit, Sivan’s sheer star power may have precluded any possibility of intimacy.
When Sivan finally strolls into the room, he is met with squeals of admiration and thunderous applause. There is a distinctly weightless quality about him, and perhaps it would be more accurate to say he floats to the stage. Chic in an effortless way, he wears a neatly pressed white button down, cuffed black pants, and shiny black boots. His brown curls frame his face; between his high cheekbones and glass-cutting jawline, he could be made of porcelain. Sitting down between Professor Murphy and his manager, Dani Russin, Sivan carefully folds his hands in his lap, highlighting the white nail polish on his fingers. His nose ring glints beneath the fluorescent light, and the blue of his eyes is apparent even from a few rows back.
Courtesy Buzzfeed
Sivan’s mounting fame is obvious: his original song for the film “Boy Erased” was recently nominated for a Golden Globe; he has amassed nearly 25 million followers across Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube; and his album “Bloom” is certified Gold in the US. Despite all this, his genuine, down-to-earth demeanor is unmistakable. For instance, when Murphy begins by apologizing to Sivan for the golf-cart mishap, he laughs and replies affably, “It was honestly so exciting. I felt like I was on ‘The Amazing Race’ or something!” And after Murphy plays one of his first-ever videos for the audience – in which a 12-year-old Sivan sings Declan Galbraith’s “Tell Me Why” acapella – he playfully boos himself, then laughs in embarrassment, “Wow, I am sweating so much right now.” A video clip from Sivan’s SNL appearance is later cued up, and he admits he hasn’t seen it before humorously cringing to his opening lyrics.
Sivan attributes this practical sensibility in large part to his upbringing in Perth, Australia. He says coming from a tight-knit Jewish family shaped “every single part” of him.
“I think the scary thing about this business for so many people is the idea of failure,” he says, “and for me, I’m so unbelievably lucky to be able to say that that was never even really a thought. If this were to all go away, I would still be okay, because I have something as real and grounded and normal as a family that gets together for Shabbat dinner every Friday night.”
The 23-year-old artist also confesses that, while he now collaborates with some of the hottest artists in the music industry – including Ariana Grande, Alessia Cara and Zedd – he was “never a cool kid” growing up. “I knew I wasn’t about to become the most popular kid in school by singing on YouTube,” Sivan jokes, “so I kind of didn’t care because I had already sort of lost the battle.” But Sivan realized the internet’s full potential as a vehicle of opportunities early on.
“I uploaded [my] first video, and then checked it a few days later and it had like, two thousand views or something,” he recalls. “I remember thinking, ‘This is so many more people than I’ve ever sung for in real life. This is my way out.’”
The internet also provided Sivan with something he didn’t have in real life: a sense of belonging within the LGBT community. “I used to watch these people [on YouTube] who would share their coming out stories, and I didn’t know any LGBT people in real life, so seeing these people who seemed well-adjusted, happy, and normal… It made me feel like I had a community, when in reality I didn’t, but I felt like I had found one. And each one of those videos felt like a little sort of building block in my self-confidence.”
He further explains that his song “Heaven” is one of the most personally meaningful because it’s about his own coming out – fittingly revealed via YouTube video.
“It’s a song about all the questions you have around coming out,” he explains. “Am I going to get married? Am I going to have kids? And that shift where you’re like, this template my brother and sister have for their lives, it doesn’t apply to me, and I feel really lost.”
Sivan says the song is important to him for the new significance it’s taken on, too: helping fans build that same feeling of community he once yearned for. “I wrote it about my own personal experience,” he says, “but then when I started touring it really shifted, and the meaning to me now is so much more about everyone else.”
In the industry of Hollywood – a space traditionally brimming with secrets and veneers – Sivan’s sincerity and candor come as a breath of fresh air. And through his many media channels, Sivan encourages his global fanbase to celebrate who they are.
“Some of my earliest memories growing up were trying to coax myself out of any sort of femininity, because I thought it would let people know I was gay,” he says. “I used to monitor the way I dressed and moved. But then I went through this crazy, rewarding experience of pushing myself step by step to sort of defy any of the other bullshit that was in my head, and it ended up being so liberating.”
A still from “Bloom”
This uncensored, unapologetic expression of self is evident in Sivan’s music, like his thumping hit “My My My!” An unabashed ode to getting it on, songs like this allow Sivan to articulate his sensuality through provocative lyrics like “I’ve got my tongue between your teeth/ Go slow, no, no, go fast/ You like it just as much as me.” The music video further illustrates the point: In “My, My, My!” Sivan, sweaty and gyrating to the beat, is surrounded by other men assuming equally seductive poses and gazes. And in the gender-bending video for his electric sex-anthem, “Bloom,” Sivan is featured in blue eyeshadow with lips painted red, twirling blissfully in a two-piece floral gown.
It may seem paradoxical that someone so wholly entrenched in the world of social media – a place where people go to produce picture-perfect facades of their lives – is somehow simultaneously so authentic. But Sivan discovered and nurtured his identity through social media, rather than being in conflict with it; after all, he sparked his career online, expressed his deepest truths to thousands of viewers, and received enormous support from the loyal fanbase he has built over the past decade through the web. Unlike many celebrities, Sivan and his social media persona are one and the same, and each post represents a different but equally true snapshot of his life and journey.
(L to R) USC Associate Professor Mary Murphy, Troye Sivan, and Dani Russin, Sivan’s manager.
His willingness to share his story deeply resonates with fans, too. Audience members at USC took turns at the microphone asking questions and professing how much Sivan means to them; one fan even flew in from San Francisco for the event. There is mutual warmth in the rapport between Sivan and his fanbase, and he notes that, “I’ve always wanted to treat my fans with respect, and I think they [would] know the second I do something disingenuous.”
Sivan’s humility and vulnerability spillover into everything he does, from his songwriting to his tweets and vlogs. And regarding the future, Sivan has the same goal: total honesty.
“My life goal has sort of shifted,” he concluded. “When I was a little kid, I wanted to be a very famous singer, like Michael Jackson or something. Now, I just want to be able to look back on my life and know that I made stuff that I was really proud of, whatever that looks like.”