Troye Sivan is having the kind of year that would make even the most seasoned pop star break a sweat. And he’s doing it all while looking obscenely well-rested, which frankly feels unfair.
On October 9, the 31-year-old Australian pop prince drops She’s the Best, his fourth studio album and first since 2023’s Something to Give Each Other. And based on the two singles he’s already unleashed, Troye isn’t just releasing an album. He’s staging a full-scale cultural takeover with some of the gayest icons alive as his co-conspirators.
Madonna Said Yes, Darling
The album’s second single, “Party,” is built around a sample of Madonna’s 2000 hit “Music” — because apparently Troye looked at the last forty years of pop history and thought, “I’ll take that one, thanks.” The Queen of Pop herself co-signed the sample on Instagram Stories and called it “lovely,” which is roughly equivalent to the Pope giving you a fist bump.
Madonna reportedly made clearing the sample “super easy” for the track, which is sweet of her considering this is the same woman who once published an entire coffee table book of erotic photography and still found time to tell everyone she was misunderstood. The song is a euphoric, dance-floor-ready anthem that sounds like what would happen if a medieval castle and a gay club had a baby. Which, honestly, is more coherent than it sounds.
Nicole Kidman Is in the Video. Yes, Really.
The album’s lead single and title track, “She’s the Best,” came out in August with a music video starring none other than Nicole Kidman. Not a Nicole Kidman lookalike. Not a Nicole Kidman AI deepfake. The actual Nicole Kidman, presumably between takes of whatever prestige TV project she’s filming in a different accent this week.
Troye first met Kidman on the set of Boy Erased in 2018, the Joel Edgerton film about gay conversion therapy where both played supporting roles. He got her phone number on set and held onto it like the golden ticket it was. When he sent her the song, she called him back — and he literally ended a Zoom meeting mid-sentence to pick up. “Hi darling Troye, it’s Nic,” her voicemail began, and somewhere in that sentence the collective Gay Internet lost its mind.
The track also features a secret Charli XCX cameo at the end, because of course it does. Troye Sivan doesn’t just make songs. He makes events. George Daniel (The 1975 drummer and Charli’s husband) co-wrote and produced, Jack Antonoff lent his_midas touch, and Leland — Troye’s longtime writing partner — rounded out the credits. That’s an absurd amount of star power for a single track, and yet somehow it doesn’t feel crowded. It feels like Troye invited all his talented friends to the same party and they all behaved.
Sir Ian McKellen Narrates a Medieval Gay Fever Dream
For “Party,” Troye went even harder. The music video, directed by Gordon Von Steiner and filmed at a castle in Berkeley, England, features Troye as a medieval knight — all chainmail and yearning — with narration by Sir Ian McKellen. Yes, Gandalf introduces a music video about a gay dance party set in the Middle Ages. 2026 is a wild timeline.
The video is camp in the Sontag sense: elaborate costumes, choreographed dance routines in period costume, and a homoerotic energy that’s “barely contained,” as one critic put it delicately. McKellen’s voiceover lends the whole thing a Shakespeare gravitas that makes it funnier than it has any right to be. It’s the kind of full-commitment pop spectacle that most artists don’t bother with anymore, which is exactly why it works.
The Women Who Made the Man
What’s striking about She’s the Best is what Troye chose to sing about. After years of writing about men and the messy interior of his own psyche, he pivoted. The album is a love letter to the women in his life.
“The one thing that has been constant in my whole life is the women in my life, and the feminine people in my life,” he told Rolling Stone. He credits everyone from Ariana Grande and Lily-Rose Depp (his co-stars) to Charli XCX (his touring partner and artistic soulmate) as muses. “I’ve always just loved being in the orbit of these women,” he said, which is either the healthiest thing a pop star has ever said or the most calculated PR pivot, and honestly? Both options are fine.
Kidman, in particular, represents something specific for Troye. “She’s always just been such a picture of the divine feminine to me,” he said. He got her number on a film set in 2018 and somehow didn’t blow it by being weird about it. That’s a level of social grace most of us can only aspire to.
From Perth to the World
For context on just how far Troye Sivan has come: he started as a kid on YouTube in Perth, Australia, posting covers in his bedroom. He came out publicly in 2013 via a YouTube video (the most Gen Z way possible before “Gen Z” was even a thing people said). He acted alongside Russell Crowe and Kidman in Boy Erased. His 2023 single “One of Your Girls” became a queer anthem with a music video that featuring Troye in full drag. And now he’s sampling Madonna, casting Oscar winners, and getting knighted narrators for medieval fever-dream videos.
This week, he’ll perform at London’s brand-new Apple Music Hall at Battersea Power Station — a 600-capacity venue so intimate that even Elton John had to open it. Troye follows him, alongside Charli XCX, Arlo Parks, and Burna Boy. Playing a tiny venue when you could easily sell out arenas is the ultimate power move, and Troye knows exactly what he’s doing.
Why He Matters Right Now
Here’s what makes Troye Sivan genuinely important in this moment: he’s one of the few openly gay male pop stars operating at the absolute top of pop music, and he’s doing it without hedging. There’s no coy ambiguity, no “I don’t believe in labels” press tour. He’s a gay man making dance music with Madonna samples and Nicole Kidman videos and medieval homoerotic choreography, and he’s treating all of it as completely normal because, well, it is.
He’s also managing to be both critically acclaimed and commercially viable, which in the current music landscape basically requires a miracle. Something to Give Each Other was a breakout; She’s the Best looks like it might be the coronation.
The album drops October 9. The medieval knight cosplay is presumably already packed away. But the vibe — the full-commitment, queer-as-hell, star-studded, women-loving, Madonna-sampling, Shakespearean-narrated vibe — that’s the Troye Sivan brand. And right now, nobody else is doing it better.
“She’s the Best” arrives October 9 on Interscope Records. Stream “Party” and “She’s the Best” now.
