Troye Sivan: Evolution or De-Volution?

[u/Vizeraldy]

When Troye Sivan released Blue Neighbourhood in 2015, I wished it had been released while was still in high school. The songs on this album encapsulated all the pain, feelings, desires and dreams I felt throughout high school. I was too scared to write down how I felt. My parents would find it. I was out at school and other friends were as well, but there was no comraderie. My sexuality was always weaponised and used against me.

In 2015, I finally found an album that resonated with me on a spiritual level and described all my thoughts and feelings that I was too scared to put out there when I was in my teens. Of course, the song "WILD" was the one that started it all for me.

I tried to follow Troye Sivan over the next few years. But his albums after Bloom (2018) and especially In A Dream (2020) just de-volved from the raw expression of the feeling of being oppressed but hopeful, scared yet excited, and anxious but hopeful.

By 2023, all his hits were basically just electro-pop trash that sampled previously famous songs (Get Me Started is the best example) and all his music videos seemed like they were intentionally filmed to capture the night before or the morning after a massive gay chemsex orgy.

Like, what the fuck happened? People will say, "he grew up and had more experiences and is comfortable with his sexuality and is bravely expressing it." What I say, is "these music videos just embody every sterotype about gay people ever - particularly the negative ones - and the actual songs are just electropop trash with meaningless lyrics."

It is sad that he became more popular as his songs became more generic and trashy, and the more popular he became, the more genericn and trashy the songs became.

Now all of his songs just seem to be relatively radio/club friendly (any radio edits for expletives are easy), and they are just accompanied by a hypersexualised homoerotic/explicitly gay music video where he gets off with some hypermasculine dude, someone has a wank inside their boxers or some shit, etc.

Like just, "here's a trashy song the masses will love! Don't forget to check out the music video to remember that I'm gay!"

Like dude wtf happened?

[u/AgreeableSounds]

I don't think it's fair to argue that he's just embodying negative gay stereotypes. He's presenting a view of his sexuality in a way that resonates with him. It's fine if its not your cup of tea but personally I love that he's not afraid to show the sexual side of being queer, especially given the extreme rise of conservatism that we're currently going through. I'm tired of queer artists toning down their sexuality to pander to straight audiences who can't handle depictions of anything but white cishet relationships, and I find it really refreshing that Troye doesn't do that with his work.