Troye Sivan Grapples With Agony and Ecstasy on ‘Something to Give Each Other’: Album Review
It’s something of a marvel to trace the trajectory of Troye Sivan’s pop career. Only a decade ago, the singer-songwriter sat poised in front of his camera, the “most nervous” he’d ever been in his life. He was coming out to his YouTube followers in a video that now has more than nine million views, three years after he’d told his family he was gay. What viewers didn’t know is that it was also a surreptitious way to get ahead of a potential issue with EMI Australia, with whom he was negotiating for a record deal and feared would tell him to stay in the closet.
Instead, EMI sent him a congratulatory email, marking the first step towards becoming one of the music industry’s foremost gay male pop stars. In the years since, we’ve witnessed him blossom from the teen surrendering his youth to a lover on 2015’s “Blue Neighbourhood” to gesturing towards a sexual awakening on “Bloom” three years later. Now, in the wake of the pandemic when lockdown rules in his native Australia were binding, he’s arrived with his third record, “Something to Give Each Other,” and he’s at his most realized and forthcoming: a pop singer with something to say, one who does so frankly with a self-assurance that only comes with age.
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“Something” is a record about agony and ecstasy. Now 28, Sivan has spent much of the album cycle explaining that it’s a bacchanalian celebration of sex, relationships and community. But it’s also equally about grief and being unable to let go of the pain of a relationship’s end, parsing over those small moments that take on significant meaning as time wears on. In that sense, human connection is the central theme of “Something”: how it manifests, its fleeting nature, and the lasting impression it leaves on us.
The preceding singles have turned out to be slight red herrings in the build-up to release. Few other songs on the album, which clocks out at a manicured 10 tracks, pulsate with the same club-rearing vitality as “Rush” and “Got Me Started.” Those numbers suggested that this would be an album about queer euphoria, and the abandon of anonymous connection. Sivan does thrive in that mode, because it’s true to his life. In interviews, he described how he frequented gay bars between COVID lockdowns in Melbourne and went “ballistic,” forging connections with others under dim lights.
He finds a way in the singles to translate that electricity and sense of release with ease and intrigue — it comes across clearly in the songs’ sweaty videos, which went semi-viral over the summer. Passive indulgence and instant gratification permeate “Honey,” another track that throbs underneath Sivan’s commanding tenor: “I see love in every space, I see sex in every city / Every town I wonder what us two could make / ‘Cause I feel so good around you / Can you imagine what we’d get up to?”
But the emotional comedown the next morning is a recurring coded part of the gay experience, and Sivan embraces those vulnerable moments with an unsurprisingly tender touch throughout the rest of the album. It’s what made “Bloom” and his 2020 EP “In a Dream” so stark in the plain ways he explored intimacy, oftentimes through seemingly coded language, like on the former’s namesake single. The fact that Sivan can now sing so frankly about sex and relationships is one of the album’s strong suits, and never before has he been so forthright. Nothing is hiding in plain sight, and he’s mature enough to confront what lies before him.
Leading up to “Something,” Sivan recounted how a breakup in 2020 informed some of the songs on the album, and it’s when he grapples with the complicated feelings that came from it that he’s at his most gripping. The forlorn “Can’t Go Back, Baby,” which samples indie diamond-in-the-rough Jessica Pratt, reconciles nostalgia with mourning over what no longer exists. “I wish you weren’t dead to me, so much to miss in you,” he sings. “More than just my enemy, you were my lover, too / And I hope you forgive yourself, because I swear I do / And it breaks my heart to say I can’t wait to live without you.” It’s a familiar feeling to anyone who’s been through a breakup, existing in the uncomfortable space between holding on and letting go.
“Still Got It” is easily the album’s centerpiece, both musically and lyrically. Accompanied by a voluptuous church organ and chugs on a guitar, it finds Sivan at the same crossroads he faces on “Can’t Go Back, Baby,” only this time his former lover isn’t a memory. He sings of bumping into his ex — who’s now like an “old colleague,” a harsh detail — and joining him on the backseat of a party bus where a few drinks lead to bad decisions. This is the moment where he finally faces what he’s contended: “It’s bound to happen I suppose, but fuck me now I really know, yeah I know / I still got it bad, I still got it bad, ’cause you got what you had / And I still want it (I still want it) / I still want it bad.”
This is the space where Sivan is at his most human, something we haven’t wholly gotten in one of his records. He isn’t a showy singer, by any means, which he uses to his advantage. Throughout the album, he sings with a chilled poise, a testament to his growth and confidence in himself. The fact that he stays confined to a few octaves would normally draw ire from pop fans seeking flash and bombast; here, it’s his strong suit, making the album conversational and specific. “Something” may be rooted in the gay experience, but the sentiment is universal, and Sivan communicates it directly to listeners like a confessional.
To that, “Something” is a snapshot of an artist who has only just begun to come to terms with his positioning as an entertainer: accepted by his audience, but not shielded from critique; responsible for his image, yet pushing boundaries where possible. It’s why Sivan is at his best on “Something,” a transcendent realization that, even at the most honest version of yourself, you still have a ways to go.
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