Troye Sivan - She's the Best Review
Troye Sivan’s fourth album pushes his pop further out while staying rooted in love, memory and the women who shaped him.
One of the very few YouTuber-to-musician success stories, Troye Sivan’s fourth studio album, She’s The Best, is the Aussie’s most expansive and experimental record to date, and it is all the better for it. Moving between bombastic bravado and vulnerable introspection, She’s The Best is a fantasia of eclectic sonic stylings grounded by its collage of real-world sounds and samples, further galvanised by the influence of, and fervour for, the women who had a hand in making him who he is today.
This is most apparent in the album’s opener, title track and lead single, ‘She’s The Best’. An ode to womanhood in all its forms, the sensitivity and sheer love evident in the meticulous makeup of the song, from its lush, lively yet tranquil production to its intentionally breathy spoken-word lyrics outlining the lives of the women he holds dear, crafts an atmosphere rife with joyful admiration. If not included on the album itself (Lily-Rose Depp features on ‘Lost Time’), the music of his favourite female musicians is a palpable influence on the expansive wellspring of sounds explored throughout the record’s twelve tracks.
Outside of the Madonna sample from her 2000 hit ‘Music’ on ‘Party’, songs like ‘I Do This For You’ are suffused with the mellow, moody late-90s R&B sound of Janet Jackson à la ‘Got ’Til It’s Gone’, with its sample-heavy trip-hop rhythms, soft ad-libs and reliance on repetition. Many, if not most, of the tracks on She’s The Best are garnished with a genre-bending cacophony of sampledelia reminiscent of artists like De La Soul, The Avalanches and even Deee-Lite at times, giving the tracks an immersive feel that manages to avoid feeling either boring or bloated.
Full of wistful longing, the record’s love songs are dedicated to an unknown future figure, their emotional weight emanating from Sivan’s ability to turn insecure introspection into playful pining. Whether it’s daydreamily yearning on ‘Cowboy’ (“And the night and our time is a cavalry gone too soon”), imagining professing his undying love on ‘FF’ (“Me and my baby are fucking forever/Gone are the days of waiting for pleasure”), or manifesting an eternal romance on ‘Love So Big It Hurts’ (“Love so big, it hurts/The biggest that there is on the earth”), the record’s version of love songs occupies an underexplored space of cathartic bliss built on an enduring hope in the notion of romantic love.
‘Le Boy’ is certainly the album’s standout. As if coming out of a car’s muffled radio, Sivan’s first-verse vocal distortion gives way to a funky, waterbed bassline and glowing psychedelic synths as his soft, sultry vocals melt into the track’s crescendo of a chorus. Draped with almost flamboyantly orchestral backing vocals, romantic strings and the gentle strums of an acoustic guitar, ‘Le Boy’ is a euphoric amalgamation of the pop experimentation that bathes the rest of the record.
She’s The Best radiates a confidence that was toyed with in 2023’s Something To Give Each Other and only fully tapped into on Sivan’s latest studio album. Embracing spontaneous experimentation in order to centre himself, not the persona, in the music, the record unfolds unexpectedly from one track to the next, pushing Sivan’s artistry further and surpassing mere pop singer-songwriter expectations. Beyond the catchy choruses and earworm lyrics, She’s The Best feels arrestingly alive and lived-in, carefully crafted with the utmost confidence in not only himself but in his audience. Party in the bush!