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What are the films, books, music, and more that inspire Troye Sivan? For The New Yorker’s Starter Pack series, the Australian artist stopped by to chat about the cultural works—including a seminal documentary on Harlem’s queer ball culture and an autobiographical novella by Annie Ernaux—that have influenced him and his new album, “She’s the Best.”
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00:00I'm very much on the tip of meeting hot guys in real life at parties, which happens a lot here.
00:06Hey, what's up? This is Troy Sivan, and this is my starter pack of films, books, music, and more.
00:11So for films, I'm going to do films that inspired some of my music videos.
00:15First one is The Favourite. This was part of the inspiration for the party music video.
00:20First of all, I just love this movie. It's gay, it's elaborate and beautiful and really funny.
00:26It's kind of camp in moments, yet it is so cinematically gorgeous.
00:31And I think those are all of the notes that we wanted to hit with the party video.
00:34Like when we first came up with the concept for the party video and the fact that it was going
00:37to be this like medieval period piece,
00:39I loved the concept, but I was also a little bit nervous. I was like, I don't want it to
00:43be a big joke.
00:44You know what I mean? I wanted it to be a little bit camp. Obviously, the concept is super camp,
00:48but I still wanted it to be gorgeous.
00:50And then when The Favourite came up as like a reference point, everything clicked and I was like, this is
00:56going to be amazing if we can pull it off.
00:58If we can't, this is going to be an absolute like dumpster fire.
01:02And then for my video for She's the Best, Paris is Burning comes to mind because it's obviously just like
01:08quintessentially New York and just such an important,
01:11I think like piece of cinema and really kind of does the same job that I was hoping to do
01:17with the She's the Best video,
01:18which is through these like individual characters and vignettes, you get a sense of community and the culture and the
01:24city.
01:24It kind of tells this big, beautiful story.
01:27I think I look to drag for a sense of like just complete fearlessness.
01:31I think, you know, spending so much of my young life deathly afraid of my own femininity,
01:39I think I found a lot of liberation in drag, but it's a very, very, very like magical experience, I
01:46would say.
01:47And so I definitely wanted to pay tribute to that in the video.
01:50Right now, I'm on a real power trip because I keep asking people to do things and they keep saying
01:57yes.
01:57You know, on this album, there's like moments from Lily Rose Depp.
02:02So Ian McKellen did the voiceover for the party music video.
02:05Madonna said yes to being sampled on party.
02:07Nicole Kidman's in the She's the Best video.
02:09It's like I am really getting to interact and work with people that I have looked up to for my
02:15entire life.
02:16Yeah.
02:16So I met Madonna for the first time like last week and it was crazy.
02:21Honestly, like it really sort of sent me into a tailspin for the next few days that followed
02:26because I'm not being hyperbolic.
02:28I genuinely was like, I don't really know what to do after this.
02:32Like I, and it's not, it's not just meeting her.
02:35It's like, Like a Prayer was the first song that I ever, ever, ever sung in my life.
02:39Like it's like the first song that I remember.
02:41I fear your voice.
02:46It's like an angel sighing.
02:49She said to me, she was like, I love your song.
02:51And then she was like, our song because she sampled on the song.
02:54And it just was such a surreal moment for me.
02:57I'm so aware of her legend and how like her legacy.
03:04I think, you know, I think she's changed pop music forever.
03:07And I think she's like one of the greatest artists of all time.
03:10And so I'm just very, very, very shook by it.
03:12So one of the musicians that has inspired me recently has got to be Cornelius.
03:18I discovered his music maybe two years ago or something like that.
03:22And it was some of the weirdest music I'd ever heard in my life.
03:25And I fell in love.
03:27There's this one song called Mic Check.
03:29That is truly one of the weirdest things I've ever heard.
03:41I think his use of sampling and kind of like found sounds, or at least they feel like found
03:46sounds was really, really inspiring to me because it feels like the music is taking place in the
03:53real world.
03:53It doesn't feel like something that was created in like a vacuum in like a recording studio.
03:57It feels like it's this like living, breathing organism kind of thing.
04:02And then on top of it, he does this thing in that song.
04:05That's just like one of my favorite things of all time.
04:07You start with one thing and then you add these like warm chords underneath it later in the song.
04:14And it kind of changes the whole feel.
04:16And I'm a sucker for like a happy, sad chord.
04:20Like I think music that feels simultaneously like melancholy and also hopeful.
04:27Another example of that is something like Dancing on My Own, you know, by Robin.
04:37Where it's like that thing where you feel so euphoric, but you also kind of want to cry.
04:42That is like a feeling that I'm constantly striving for in my music.
04:46So Arthur Russell is another one, I would say, who's been very inspirational to me over the
04:50last couple of years.
04:51Wild Combination probably is like one of the ones that I'm talking about.
04:55I think I'm very used to making music in a very kind of like controlled environment
05:02where the goal has been like perfection, I think, in a sort of pop standard.
05:09And whether that's structurally how the song, you know, flows from section to section or
05:13whether it's in the production or in the quality of the recording, you know, how like clear
05:18it sounds.
05:19And there's something really like radical to me about his music.
05:25It kind of breaks a lot of those rules that I probably tried to follow.
05:30And the result of that is something that feels like so, so honest.
05:35It changed the way that I made this most recent album of mine, She's the Best, where I was
05:39recording in my house and recording my own vocal and not necessarily knowing how to do
05:45that and being okay with the fact that like maybe sometimes there's like my dog in the
05:51background of one of the vocal takes or something.
05:53I think the priority shifted where it was like, okay, honesty above like all else and follow
06:00your instinct above all else.
06:02You know, even if that happens at like 7am and you're at home and you're recording it
06:06kind of like yourself.
06:07I'm just very inspired by him and the way that he moves kind of like between dance music
06:11and like beautiful acoustic, you know, sounds like it was made in his bedroom.
06:15He's like, he's just an amazing artist.
06:17Every now and then now I will get sent a link to a song and it's got like my voice
06:24on it,
06:25you know, and it's just absolutely not me.
06:28It's something that someone has like created using a prompt.
06:32And I think I was so sort of like disturbed by that, that I just became much more interested
06:37in trying to make something that felt unpredictable and like undeniably human and undeniably me.
06:46You know, I wanted to even like surprise myself, I think, with some of the musical choices.
06:51Also just so grateful because I realize how lucky I am to be able to work with like very,
06:57very, very talented musicians who can play instruments in real life.
07:02That was something that became increasingly more important to me with the kind of like
07:07popularization of AI slot pop.
07:09One of the books that I loved the most during this album making process was A Simple Passion
07:13by Annie Ono.
07:15I was very deep in my like yearning bag at the time of making the album.
07:21And I don't think anyone yearns like Annie Ono does in this book.
07:26It is kind of like on the borderline of mania and something that feels quite insane.
07:31And that was something that I really related to, unfortunately.
07:35Yeah, that book, it's like 60 pages long.
07:37You can read it in an hour and it is just like beautiful, beautiful prose and it's gorgeous.
07:43Another book that I was really inspired by was Slow Days, Fast Company by Eve Babitz.
07:48It was my first Eve Babitz book.
07:50I mean, I love the way that she writes.
07:52I think she's super funny and cool and interesting.
07:54And I think the thing that I really loved though about that book was how through these separate,
08:01sort of vignettes, you get this really grand picture that tells a story of like a city
08:07and a time and a culture.
08:11And I think that that freed me up in my writing process because I was like, instead of trying
08:18trying to kind of like force a narrative throughout the entire album, I'm just going to kind of
08:24like tell these stories and almost treat it a bit like a collage that then when you step
08:32back, you get the whole kind of picture.
08:34I'd never really read a book like that before.
08:36And it did.
08:37It kind of changed the way that I wanted to make the album.
08:39I read in like spurts.
08:40I'm very blessed to be a fast reader.
08:42So I will like tear through like five books in, I don't know, like two or three weeks or
08:50something like that.
08:50And then I forget about it for like three months and then I'll do that again and then forget about
08:56it.
08:56And it usually starts in December, like when I go to Australia for this Australian summer,
09:00that'll be my first like tear and then take a break for a bit and then come back.
09:05And every time I come back, I feel like I need a book to like kind of ease me back
09:09in.
09:09So I'll read some like John le Carr, like spy novel or something like that.
09:13And then I'm back.
09:14One of my favorite places that I've ever partied is Melbourne.
09:17I think it's one of the best cities to party in in the world.
09:20It's like a real cultural hub in Australia and that can look like a million different things.
09:24Sometimes it looks like a night out in Fitzroy, party in a park.
09:28So I explained what a bush doof is, which is a doof doof doof in the bush, which just means
09:33like not in the city or it kind of, you know, like in a park in the city.
09:37You're not, you're not in like a super urban area.
09:40Another one is a poof doof, which is a gay person.
09:43And it's honestly like kind of a slur.
09:45I can say it obviously, but poof doof is a doof for poofs and it's really fun.
09:52Berlin is, I mean, kind of cliche to talk about partying in Berlin,
09:56but it really is a very special experience in place.
09:59I made the music video for Rush in Berlin.
10:01Something about how kind of seriously they take partying there is really cool to me.
10:06I think that it becomes something so much bigger than like, yeah, let's get fucked up.
10:10And feels very, very, very much like all of these people from all over the world travel to this place
10:14or like live in this place that like lives and breathes partying in a way that just feels very,
10:21very, very like pure to me and you know, you go and there's like no phones in a lot of
10:28these places
10:29and it just, it feels like really you're getting to the essence of what it's all about,
10:32which is like people coming together to dance and listen to music.
10:36I've just had a lot of, a lot of fun there.
10:38And then Cape Town was the first city that I ever went to a gay bar in.
10:43I was born in South Africa and I still have family there and I was in Cape Town and I
10:47was like,
10:48definitely not of age and went to a gay bar in an area called Devatakant, which is like the gay
10:55area of Cape Town.
10:57And I remember so distinctly like the smell and my feet sticking to the floor.
11:02And it was my first time being in a space where I wasn't the minority and we had a really,
11:08really good time.
11:09I actually love going out with my siblings.
11:10Um, we're all really close in age and they are my friends and so we have a lot of fun
11:17together.
11:18I'd say they're like my favorite people to go out with.
11:19I'm living in Brooklyn now for the first time and I feel like there's a lot to be explored.
11:23I've only been in this place for like maybe two weeks and so I'm kind of going out a lot
11:29when I'm here
11:29and I'm very much on the tip of meeting hot guys in real life at parties, which happens a lot
11:36here.
11:37Music videos to watch during gay guy music video night.
11:40The first one I talk about it all the time, Dirty, Christina Aguilera.
11:49This music video changed the trajectory of my entire life, made me want to make music videos.
11:53It's massive in scale, it's beautifully shot, she's dancing, she's wet, her hair is disgustingly dirty.
12:00It's perfect.
12:01We had this downloaded probably illegally on my like family desktop computer while I was growing up
12:08and I would just watch it over and over and over again.
12:11Got to Let's Go On by Janet Jackson.
12:17This video was like on the mood board heavy for the Rush video.
12:23Something about the color grade and the groups of people and how like kind of sweaty everyone is.
12:29Curveball to throw the gay guys, no surprises by Radiohead.
12:36Such a simple video, unbelievably beautiful and inspirational to me.
12:46I've yet to do anything in that world of like, you know, kind of like one take situation,
12:52but it's definitely something that I have considered before and would love to do one day.
12:57But I think very cinematically when I'm making music, especially if I'm like making something
13:02I'm excited about.
13:03I think that's when I know that I'm excited about it is when I start to imagine like a cinematic
13:07world.
13:08And so sometimes I'll be in the studio writing the song and like pulling references for the video
13:13at the same time.
13:14I just have a, I think a very like high standard for what I want a music video to achieve.
13:19And I think I'm just like a really big believer in like the power of the music video.
13:25And like I said, you know, a video can change someone's life like the dirty video did to mine.
13:30I want to kind of like try and strive for that level of creation every time.
13:37I think my only real recommendation is a push away from short form content online.
13:42I just recommend opening the YouTube app.
13:46They're not paying me to say this instead of opening one of the other ones.
13:49This is so boring.
13:51I watch a lot of like infotainment.
13:53Like I'm like learning about finance, construction,
14:00somebody building an edible garden, beekeeping.
14:04I think it's good though.
14:05That's the thing.
14:05It's sort of the point is I'm like, I'm trying to almost watch content that is going to
14:10like kind of slow me down and hopefully improve my attention span.
14:14And like, it feels kind of like radical these days to watch a 40 minute video.
14:19You know, I think that the like YouTube to musician pipeline for me,
14:25I feel like at any point I could jump back to YouTube because ultimately the kind of like
14:32skills and community and everything that I built while making YouTube videos,
14:37it's still the same one that I kind of like utilize today or there's still the same skills that I
14:43utilize today, which is that I think I just learned that people are smart and they can feel when
14:48something is not genuine and that applies in kind of like all areas of my life now.
14:53Don't watch shorts.
14:55I've never in my life watched a YouTube short and I don't think I ever will.
14:58I just find that YouTube is like actually a place where I feel like I'm enriching my brain
15:03rather than like turning it to mush.
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