TROYE SIVAN - She’s The Best

“I wanted to create something that, and I don’t say this with arrogance, only I could make. People are smart, and I wanted to make something genuinely interesting and complex.” Troye Sivan seems to have a clear vision as he explains the genesis of his (much-anticipated) fourth album. Or at least that's how it appears.
The Australian pop singer-songwriter returns with a potentially divisive record, especially for longtime fans, aiming to explore femininity, women, and all the people of feminine identity who have come into his life. It starts right with the single that titles and opens the LP, “She’s The Best”, dominated by an electro music-box sound that spins around a dreamy melodic hook, a full-on tribute to the universe that has surrounded him for pretty much his whole life, as he explains in his own words: “Boys have come and gone, jobs have come and gone, but I’ve always, always had my girls. My entire life I’ve existed in the orbit of incredible women. This is my love letter to them. Walk down the street today with your headphones in, listen to this song, and look around you: the divine feminine is everywhere.”

If the opening is soporific, however shamelessly ecstatic, on “Party” Sivan samples Madonna's “Music” to deliver his own clubbing-leaning variant on it, naturally. Too bad the result is a contrived dance-house gimmick in the chorus. Meanwhile, with the other lead single, “FF”, Troye once again softens everything, with an existential ballad that opens up a bit in the style of Washed Out, but with effects that are far too saccharine, despite the songwriting support of the likes of Jack Antonoff, George Daniel, Cirkut, Madison Love, Leland and Jasper Harris.
“‘FF’ is a love song for a man I don’t yet know. Or at least, I don’t think I know him. It’s the version of me most consumed by longing, and it’s about how lonely it can be to love someone who isn’t in your life yet. It might sound like a promise, but it’s really a wish,” Sivan says. However noble and sincere this wish of his may be, the song itself suggests precious little that's surprising and/or alluring.

Described by the musician as the “portrait” of his life, “with all its moods and nuances,” between excesses, loneliness and the usual attempts to make things add up, “She’s The Best” actually ends up being a record that's often stale and elsewhere muddled in its rhythms, at times evanescent in its melodic execution. Passages like “Canada Dry” sound as if they'd come straight out of a vault of B-sides by George Michael, while the less dance-oriented tracks on the record, such as “Love So Big It Hurts,” however roughly epic, complete with strings in the background and carpet-like piano flourishes, don't add much to the whole.
But the worst comes courtesy of Lily-Rose Depp, in the chilly stride of “Lost Time,” so kitsch and saccharine in its attempt to be nu-soul that it makes you long for even the least inspired Toro Y Moi. Not even the sample of “Dream” by the unforgettable Forest For The Trees on “I Do This for You” is enough to fix things in this fruit salad of indietronica mixed with overly saturated '90s electronics.

Troye also reveals that he found himself returning every night to empty hotel rooms, coming face to face with the “loneliest, most unexpected side of life on tour.” Also serving as the album's producer, he reveals he rediscovered the freedom he remembers experiencing as a kid, when he used to write “music in his own bedroom,” before breaking through everywhere and surpassing 15.5 billion streams worldwide, landing nine entries on the Billboard Hot 100, and earning three Grammy nominations.
But if, in the midst of all this, the only track that truly hits the mark is “Cowboy” — a delightfully catchy little pop song, nothing more, thanks to its dancing, looping riff — it means the Perth musician should perhaps reconsider his approach, and go back to relying at least on the delicate (and deeply inspired) theatricality of “Bloom.” Let's hope it's not too late.

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18/10/2026