Inside a former Presbyterian church in the heart of London’s West End, Troye Sivan is throwing a party. It’s in honour of the release of his song ‘Party’ (of course), and over the course of the night, the Australian pop star puts on a celebration befitting the track’s hedonistic thesis statement. In a room that also once had a short life as the iconic ’80s nightclub The Limelight – frequented by the likes of George Michael, Grace Jones and Iggy Pop – he’s invited an exclusive guest list of friends and fans to indulge in his medieval bacchanalia.
In about an hour, he’ll take to the pulpit to premiere the music video, directed by his collaborator Gordon von Steiner, who drops us straight into a 15th-century orgy. Sivan parties, prowls and shags his way through the kingdom and a guy next to NME shouts, “God, being gay is so great!” as the video smash-cuts from Sivan lustfully diving into a man’s bare ass to a slick, choreographed dance sequence.
Before everything kicks off, though, Sivan joins NME in the alcoves, where he waxes lyrical about his love of a night out. “The experiences that I’ve had partying throughout the years have been quite formative. There’s an element of wanting to honour that,” he says. “I think that partying is something that people take quite frivolously, and I don’t really.”
People have always let loose. It’s part of the enduring human experience to look for sweaty company to celebrate and commiserate with in equal measure. Highs are made higher under strobe lights, and lows are dulled when the thrum of a techno beat starts to feel meditative. When it came to writing his new album ‘She’s the Best’, released last week, in 2025, Sivan found himself ruminating on the many phases of life the dancefloor welcomes.
The last time Sivan sat down to write an album, 2023’s ‘Something To Give Each Other’ was born. Led by the thumping poppers anthem ‘Rush’, the record explored the second coming-of-age many of us felt post-pandemic, as we rediscovered our carnal wants and needs after months of being touch-starved. Fresh out of a breakup and learning the value of short, fleeting intimacies, the album is full of awe about the ways that connection is always just within touching distance.
“Those moments between lockdowns, I feel like I was experiencing the world for the first time, and people for the first time, and dancing for the first time again,” he says. “With this one, it’s just been a little bit more of an up-and-down time for me. I’ve been back in my feelings, maybe in a way that I wasn’t necessarily on the last one.”
He doesn’t give details on what those feelings are, but he doesn’t need to – the album does it for him. ‘She’s the Best’ is a patchwork quilt of contradictions. There are songs about pure, sensual pleasure-seeking like the Madonna-sampling ‘Party’, which is about how fun it is to party literally anywhere. (“Party in the park, party in the bush / Party under the bridge, party at the restaurant”).
“I wanted to make a moment where the person who is partying hears ‘Music’ by Madonna on the dancefloor and ascends,” he says. Sivan didn’t get to meet the Queen of Pop until he shared a stage with her at the VMAs last month, but “thankfully”, she made getting the sample cleared “a really seamless process” – something the 31-year-old says he’s “totally shocked by”.
“Partying is something that people take quite frivolously, and I don’t really”
‘Canada Dry’ – which he calls “ooey gooey slinky” pop – is about desiring someone so much you want to physically lick the sweat from their body and suck them dry. These tracks sit alongside moments of vulnerability that feel like Sivan just ripped a plaster off to show a still-open wound. “You still come to meet me in my mind / You’ve been out my life for twice the time”, he sings on ‘Embarrassingly’, a “masturbation anthem” about missing someone long after it’s socially acceptable.
Then there’s ‘Lost Time’, the album’s final track that features a spoken-word interlude from Sivan’s The Idol co-star Lily-Rose Depp, which pinpoints that friction at the heart of the album’s entire mission statement. “Being busy is overrated, just want to stay home and be creative / Me and baby staying in making up for lost time”, he sings.
Tension sits at the heart of ‘She’s the Best’, not just in the lyrics but in its overall sonic feel. It’s all together rougher, sandpapering the slickness of ‘Something To Give Each Other’, with harsher, more discordant production. You never quite know where you are from song to song, as you flit from pulsing, techno-inspired beats to angelic pop harmonies. It’s an aural whiplash that mimics Sivan’s state of mind, where he battles the inherent conflict of waiting for life’s next stage but not falling into the trap of not appreciating the present.
As an album, it lays out its emotional rawness in a way that feels different even to his already-vulnerable back catalogue. “This one definitely captures all aspects of my life over the last three years with these very high highs and then very low lows,” he says. “I’m really curious how I’m gonna look back on this one day. I think I’m gonna be proud of myself for experimenting and [for being] very matter-of-fact and honest.”
Sivan already knows that hindsight can be a killer when it comes to being autobiographical. When the conversation turns to his debut album, 2015’s ‘Blue Neighbourhood’, he gives a glimpse of his former life as a YouTuber. “Do you have any old Photo Booth videos of you?” [Looking back on that record is] a very similar experience to watching those back. You’re like, ‘Oh, I sort of recognise this person, but I don’t really. It’s quite sweet, but it’s also a little bit embarrassing.’”
Even so, he’s not interested in anticipating the potential cringe of cementing this present time or mental state for the world to see. “I don’t really [try to combat it]. I just go for it at the time, and then when I look back in hindsight, I feel like I have a lot more clarity on that time in my life.”
The vision he hopes he’ll see when he looks back on ‘She’s the Best’ is one of mending. The album chronicles a period where Sivan has locked in on healing, trialling all the different ways you can try and achieve it – therapy, getting a little “woo-woo” (“I might start dabbling in religion again, but we’ll see”) or with just a really, really great night out with his girls.
‘She’s the Best’, the album’s title track, encompasses all of that. Of course, it’s a love letter to the women who’ve propped Sivan up through the years, but it also pays homage to the person he’s uncovered within himself as a result. “When I see a young, feminine boy, it just melts my heart because I think I see a lot of myself in them,” he says. “A lot of the therapy that I’ve done over the years is very much inner child stuff and wanting to support the child that I was. I fought off my femininity for a really long time, and I’m finally arriving in the place where I feel so in touch with both my masculine and feminine sides.”
“I’m finally arriving in a place where I feel so in touch with my masculine and feminine sides”
He chose to perform in drag for part of the song’s music video, which starred fellow Aussie legend Nicole Kidman, whom he met on the set of 2018’s Boy Erased. It follows the video for 2023’s ‘One Of Your Girls’, which he also got gowned up for. “I love getting in drag,” he says, with an enormous smile. “Talking about inner child stuff, that’s such a healing experience. Being able to just truly, truly, truly express like that feels so freeing and so fun.”
That search for the self-embodied is also why choreography has become such an important aspect of his work. ‘Rush’ introduced a new physical aspect to Sivan’s artistry, with choreography by Sergio Reis, who also designed the medieval fuck-fest of ‘Party’ for this era. ‘She’s the Best’, Sivan says, is as much something to consume visually as aurally. “Part of the whole healing thing is that I felt like I couldn’t dance – and I’m not saying I’m an amazing dancer by any means – but there’s something really special about when people have a kind of unique way of moving. Just being in your body [is so important].”
Sivan knows that ‘She’s the Best’ is a big swing. It’s more experimental, more disparate, more introspective – just, well, more. But part of the journey he’s on, that he hopes to look back on with a little less cringe than a hard drive full of awkward front-facing video clips, is one where he feels as resolute in the choices he’s made for it as he does right now.
“My biggest fear is trying to make something that I think people want, releasing it and it not going well,” he says. “And then I’m like, ‘Fuck, well, I wasn’t even really listening to myself anyway.’ So, all I can really ever stand behind is making things that are true to me.” And what’s true tonight, at least, is that with the right Madonna sample, you really can party anywhere – in a park, bush, or, as Sivan proves as he heads from the alcoves back down towards the pulpit, in a church’s hallowed hall.
Troye Sivan’s ‘She’s the Best’ is out now via Interscope Records.
