FEATURE:
Vinyl Corner
Troye Sivan - Bloom
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FOR Pride Month…
I want to spotlight some especially great albums from L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ artists in Vinyl Corner. I wanted to spend some time with Troye Sivan’s remarkable second album, Bloom. Following from the acclaimed Blue Neighbourhood of 2015, his 2018 follow-up is even finer I love that debut album, though I feel Bloom is a much grander and more nuanced album. I think the Australian singer-songwriter is one of the most underrated artists around. Go and get a copy of Bloom, as it is an extraordinary album that everyone needs to listen to. Rather than jump straight to reviews, there is an interview that The Guardian conducted in 2019 that gives us more context regarding Sivan and his path to Bloom:
“Sivan has been preparing to be looked at since before puberty. As of last year, he is a pop star – not quite a household name, but big enough to command an invitation from Taylor Swift to duet on her recent US tour, and a guest spot from old friend Ariana Grande on his 2018 album Bloom. Critics compared Bloom’s euphoric synth-pop to cult Swedish pop star Robyn (the ecstatic My My My!) and 4AD goths This Mortal Coil (The Good Side, a spectral break-up ballad). He’s also an actor, recently lauded for his supporting role in the gay conversion therapy drama Boy Erased, with Nicole Kidman and Lucas Hedges.
But in 2002, Sivan was a seven-year-old boy living in Perth, western Australia, obsessed with his parents’ tapes of classic concerts. He would watch videos of Madonna and Michael Jackson, in awe at the way they moved and commanded a crowd. “I used to get nervous for them,” Sivan says, wiping off his face paint after the photoshoot. “Oh God, what if they mess up? What if they forget a lyric? I would imagine what it would be like.”
He asked for singing lessons, but was taught choral music, which bored him. “I wanted to sing Hero by Enrique Iglesias – but I didn’t have the guts to ask if I could learn a pop song. So I saw it as practising to get better.” He was rehearsing for the moment when he could become a pop star himself.
Sivan’s family had no music industry connections. “I used to Google ‘how to be a singer’,” he says, rolling his eyes at his naivety. He was an early adopter of social networking. When, aged 13, he uploaded a video of himself singing fellow teen Declan Galbraith’s Tell Me Why (“do the dolphins cry?”) to YouTube, it got 1,000 views – an audience far bigger than he’d sung to as a young chorister touring synagogues. Here was his in.
He started selling CDs of his angelic covers through a DIY website (the Dare To Dream EP, he recounts, cringing at the memory), sending his supportive but baffled mother, Laurelle, to the post office laden with packages. He accrued enough followers to attract an agent, who got him small roles in X-Men Origins: Wolverine and a South African film franchise with John Cleese. Enough, too, for creepy blokes to pose as managers and attempt to solicit him for sex. (He told his parents immediately.)
Then his voice broke. “I was really, really self-conscious because I’d built so much of my sense of self on my singing,” Sivan says. “I would open my mouth and have no idea what was going to come out. It was terrifying and broke my confidence a bit.”
Sivan came out to his family when he was 15, and to his YouTube fans three years later. By then he’d watched enough coming-out videos himself to know how helpful they could be. Plus, now he was signed, he needed to live without fear of being outed. “I wanted to be able to go to a gay club and not be worried that someone’s going to take a photo,” he says. “I wanted to tweet about boys.” On 7 August 2013, he told his (then) one million subscribers, with preternatural calm: “This could kind of change everything for me, but it shouldn’t have to.” He hadn’t warned his label; they emailed congratulations.
He launched his debut album with a series of interwoven videos in which two male lovers confront homophobic parents, repression and suicide – an unusually uncompromising approach to the pop mainstream. “This is something we simply aren’t seeing from other gay pop stars,” wrote the US culture publication Fuse.
Is mainstream acceptance the endgame for LGBTQ pop, or should queerness challenge the status quo? “I’m actually a little bit scared to have the conversation,” Sivan says. “Because I feel there’s some underlying homophobia in the general public, and within our own community.” There are two dominant stereotypes, he adds: gay men can be feminine, or “the hunky hot, masculine gay guy. As soon as you enter this grey area – and this is not just for gay men, but for all queer people – that’s where people are having a harder time understanding.”
Recently, Sivan’s peers have been debating the backlash that followed the announcement that Ariana Grande, a straight artist, would headline Manchester Pride this August. Olly Alexander of Years & Years endorsed Grande’s love for the LGBTQ community, and the city. “But – can’t stress this enough – if more people listened to and supported LGBT+ artists, they’d get more slots,” he tweeted. Sivan demurs on whether the issue lies with a homophobic industry, or with fans who simply aren’t stumping up. “We don’t have a queer Ariana, you know? If we did, I’m sure that person would be headlining. Until that day, I think we should expect that straight people are going to headline these things.”
As things are, Sivan says, he might not be in the music industry for ever. “I have a plan in my head that I’m going to grow up and have kids and a pretty normal adulthood,” he says, getting up to leave for Shabbat dinner with his mother and his boyfriend, who are on tour with him. “I want to do the school run.” He might act more, or go back to school to study graphic design. The worst thing, he says, would be to become predictable. “I am constantly trying to keep myself on my toes – and everyone else, too”.
I am interested to see whether we will get a third studio album from Troye Sivan in the next year or two. He is such an incredible talent with a very inspiring past. I know that he provides strength and inspiration to a lot of other L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ artists (and fans).
I am going to close with a couple of reviews for Bloom. There was universal praise for one of the finest albums of 2018. In their review, NME had this to say:
“These days, Sivan possesses a quiet sort of confidence. His potential previously peered through the blinds, looking out over the sleepy suburban cul-de-sac that housed his 2015 debut ‘Blue Neighourhood’. The record borrowed its name from the awkward tension that can hang over your hometown when you’re a young queer kid searching for belonging (Sivan grew up in the suburbs of Perth, Australia). “I am tired of this place / I hope people change” he sang on ‘Fools’, mapping out potential little houses and children’s names for his future like a wistful dreamer.
On ‘Bloom’, however, much of that anguish is left behind. Instead, this record sees Sivan frankly chart his dabbles on the gay dating app Grindr (‘Seventeen’) and put forth a tender sort of apology for his past actions (‘The Good Side’). On closing track ‘Animal, he softly whispers, “I am an animal with you” atop sounds that resemble a make-out mixtape spun out through a purple kaleidoscope. Whatever subject matter he touches, Sivan manages to tear away all the filters; there’s a tender sort of honesty to the whole album.
While Blue Neighbourhood’ moped deliciously amid a painful break-up, its successor explores lust, desire and wanting. Troye Sivan soars joyfully through it all, smuggling winking sexual metaphors and filthy imagery into the picture by way of Trojan horse-shaped pop bangers such as ‘Bloom’.
There is certainly something to be said for the amount of dopamine that permeates every inch of the record. Troye Sivan and other queer pop stars frequently find themselves lumped with common tags – “unapologetically out” is one clumsy term that often gets thrown about. As much as it’s often a cliché, unapologetic – or rather, completely empowered – is a mood that applies wholeheartedly to ‘Bloom’. Here, Sivan has created an album that does away with any apology; instead it sees him seize happiness with both hands”.
To finish off, here is a review from AllMusic. I like bringing in different reviews, as each site/person brings a new perspective to the same album. This is what AllMusic wrote:
“Seizing his moment with a tight set of glimmering pop confections, Australian singer/songwriter Troye Sivan embraces his role as a budding LGBT icon with Bloom, his aptly titled sophomore effort that signals his sexual awakening and personal growth into adulthood. On his 2016 debut, Blue Neighbourhood, fans met the boy; here, Sivan introduces them to a bold and fearless man. Brave and unapologetic, Bloom bursts forth with confidence, grace, and poise, allowing listeners to peek into a world that includes fumbles and mistakes, but also pure joy and romance. On the opener, "Seventeen," Sivan dives right in, recounting the loss of his virginity to an older man. Given the age gap, it's an uncomfortable but ultimately important moment for Sivan, both a rite of passage and endearing coming-of-age touchstone. From there, he spins between the dizzying extremes of young love, celebrating fleeting passions on the joyous "My My My!" and breezy innocence on the Ariana Grande-assisted "Dance to This" before lamenting the last gasps of a union on "Plum" and coming to terms with a breakup on the absolutely lovely "The Good Side." Additional highlights include the explicitly horny metaphor "Bloom" and the irresistible, 1975-esque "Lucky Strike." At a taut ten tracks, Bloom is an unambiguous statement from Sivan, clear in its intent to celebrate the highs and lows of queer love through the eyes of a proud pop star in the making”.
Go and get Troye Sivan’s second studio album. Bloom is an apt title for someone who really was blooming and determine to illustrate and illuminate queer love – through all the highs and lows that it provides. If you are foreign to Bloom, then go and investigate now. It is an album that...
ONE you need to hear.