One of the least memorable songs on the back half of She’s the Best is called ‘Troye Meets World’, which begs the question: When is the world really going to meet Troye Sivan? There’s no doubt the Australian singer’s catalog is infused with moments of vulnerability beyond the sultry hits that have crossed over into the mainstream, but his intoxicating 2023 LP Something to Give Each Other raised questions about the person behind the pop heroics. Following in the footsteps of Charli XCX’s Music, Fashion, Film, his new album would seem to offer a peek behind the curtain, but instead relegates Sivan to the beguiling sidelines of pop stardom. Lonely, impatient, and uneven, it keeps one foot in the realm of European dance-pop while the other traverses trip-hop, shoegaze, and acoustic balladry. His “most experimental album” it might be, but not all of the risks pay off.
1. She’s the Best
Sivan gets lost in the haze of a cool girl’s glow on the opening title track, which sounds like a trip down memory lane to the Charli and Jack Do America Tour (XCX sings backing vocals, and Antonoff co-produced the track alongside her husband George Daniel). A modest introduction to the album, it oddly casts the singer in the background, comfortably coasting on the outskirts of both stardom and femininity. His instructions for listening to the single reflect his own role as a voyeur: “Walk down the street today with your headphones in and listen to this song and look around.” You might find yourself enchanted by the same aura, he seems to suggest, that you’d assume he alone is privy to.
2. Canada Dry
Sivan steps into the spotlight on ‘Canada Dry’, a thumping, sultry piece of Balearic dance-pop that’s better than the one it precedes but nowhere near as good as ‘Rush’. It’s the kind of song you’d expect would flood She’s the Best, but it stands as an oddly euphoric outlier.
3. Party
The single treads similar territory, but it’s so reliant on a Madonna interpolation that it makes the record feel short on ideas; the queen of pop may have personally approved it, but enlisting him for a CONFESSIONS II remix would have had a bigger impact. Echoes of ‘Hungry Like a Wolf’ are hard to ignore, too. ‘Party’ is an easily enjoyable banger by design, but it wears out with each repeated listen, like a party you’d only willingly go to once or twice.
4. I Do This For You
The sample of Forest for the Trees’ ‘Dream’ may catch your ear, but Sivan makes little use of it. There’s not much to his depiction of the hysteria-breeding loneliness of online hookups, either; the dissatisfaction is just a lot more palpable than it was on ‘Canada Dry’.
5. Cowboy
Antonoff and Daniel’s production styles blend a lot more effectively on ‘Cowboy’, which is reminiscent of the gauzy vulnerability of 2020’s In a Dream EP – still my favorite of Sivan’s releases. The understated approach only reinforces the physicality that got so muddled on previous songs: “I wanna feel your shackles against my wrist/ I wanna taste the blood on your busted lip,” Sivan sings, finally like he means it.
6. Embarrassingly
The atmosphere seems to quiet down even further when acoustic guitars introduce ‘Embarrassingly’, but it’s not long before a shuffling beat and dreamy textures once again swaddle Sivan’s voice. When the lyrics include, “Find some sort of meditation/ Deep inside this masturbation,” maybe that’s a good thing (thankfully, these sound especially muted). Shoutout to the iPhone 6S, though.
7. Le Boy
The album’s second song in a row to be co-produced by OZGO (who is also listed as a co-writer alongside Allie X and Leland) is its most intriguingly downtempo. Between the desperately intimate verses (notice the guitar strums lightly accompanying the line about learning the instrument to write a song for le boy) and the blissfully shoegazey chorus, the quiet-loud dynamic comes off as more than just an awkward mesh of styles. Even if the outro feels a little superfluous, you get why Sivan has said the album could have been titled after it.
8. Sex Star
With FINNEAS on production, ‘Sex Star’ sticks to acoustic balladry for the entirety of its runtime, save for a few synth flourishes. Its incongruously pleasant intimacy feels redundant so soon after ‘Cowboy’.
9. Troye Meets World
The drum’n’bass influence on ‘Troye Meets World’ doesn’t help it sound any less listless. Though Sivan sings in the first person (“I just want to play, any boy, any girl”), it hardly sounds less impersonal than the opening track. It comes off as an oddly disaffected attempt at reanimating the record.
10. FF
‘FF’ is further proof that She’s the Best fares much better experimenting with trip-hop and shoegaze than straining for another club hit. Antonoff (AntonoFF?) and Daniel are back behind the boards, conjuring memories of the decade’s best 1975 song. Subject matter (“fucking forever”) aside, it’s justifiably drawn out to four-and-a-half minutes.
11. Love So Big It Hurts
The track attempts to cross swooning romanticism with a sense of grittiness, but it falters as soon as Sivan intones, “Got you, fucker, Uno reverse.” He’s singing about the biggest love there is on this earth, but it could only inspire the second-shortest song on the record.
12. Lost Time [feat. Lily Rose Depp]
Lily Rose Depp, sultrily: “Je connaîtrais déjà ta voix.” Sivan, bathed in AutoTune: “Brain so big with information.” Obligatory funky guitar riff. “Philosophic conversation.” Moody, slightly off-kilter synth. “Make me laugh until I’m horny.” Those are just ten seconds of the album’s bemusing closer, which theoretically showcases one of the ‘She’s the Best’ girls but finds very little room for her. What we’re left to contend with is an honest, sensual, yet frustrating vacuum of ideas.
