First off, the video is remarkable—truly striking in every frame. Incredible doesn’t even begin to cover it. Troye Sivan’s clip for his new single “Party” opens on a rain-soaked, muddy battlefield from a bygone era, with narration delivered in the gravelly, instantly recognizable voice of Sir Ian McKellen. (Sivan has known McKellen for more than half his life; the two shared the stage in Waiting For Godot when Sivan was just fourteen.) The track bursts to life when Sivan returns to his fortress and plunges into a dance-forward bacchanal. A note of caution: the video includes some NSFW moments. But the entire production is visually stunning and genuinely moving. And the song itself is solid, too!
“Party” is the second single from Sivan’s upcoming album She’s The Best. The lead single, a strikingly retro title track, was one of our favorite songs of the week when it dropped. That track also boasted an arresting video, directed by Gordon von Steiner, a longtime collaborator of Sivan, just like “Party.” “Party” sits in a pounding, deadpan club frame that prominently samples Madonna’s 2000 anthem “Music.” Sivan co-produced the track with Styalz Fuego, Tyde Levi, and Rob UFO, and the four of them co-wrote it with Luka Kloser, Elvira Anderfjärd, Tove Burman, and Leland.
In a press release, Sivan explains, “Dance music on a club floor sounds different from when it’s bouncing out of a laptop speaker. The repetition can be almost hypnotic, and I wanted to explore that structural effect.” Regarding the video, Sivan adds:
When Gordon von Steiner and I talked about the video and the song, we kept circling back to the idea that partying can be genuinely sacred, especially for queer people. Nightlife is often the first place a queer person finds themselves in a room where they’re not the minority, so it becomes a formative, liberating space for many of us. If letting loose is part of human nature—and I believe it is—then people have always partied. We wanted to capture what that looked like. So we went back in time and threw one.
Check it out below.
Just like She’s The Best, “Party” finds Troye Sivan in a sprechgesang, talk-singing mode. Last month, Sivan joined the Las Culturistas podcast and discussed the act of singing: “I’m not fishing for compliments. I’m not that good at it, and I’m okay with that… I genuinely feel like I’ve pulled one over on the world, and the fact that I have the same job as Beyoncé feels ridiculous.”
After laying all that out, Sivan clarifies that he’s more of a confident talk-singer than a powerhouse vocalist. And yes, pop superstardom involves more than just singing—it also requires the vision and charisma to pull off a clip like “Party,” and Sivan clearly possesses that aura.
She’s The Best is slated for release on 10/9 via Tokky’s/Interscope.
