walking upstream…
Troye Sivan
photo: pure honey · cc by 3.0 ↗Troye Sivan
Troye Sivan Mellet built a following as a teenage YouTuber before signing to EMI Australia in 2013 and breaking through with 2015's Blue Neighbourhood, whose singles "Wild," "Fools," and "Youth" made him one of pop's most visible openly gay young artists. His albums since — Bloom (2018) and Something to Give Each Other (2023) — have pushed steadily toward glossier, club-facing dance-pop, trading his early bedroom-confessional folktronica for four-on-the-floor euphoria without losing the diaristic candor about queer intimacy that defined his early work.
the sound in question
2015
YOUTHTroye Sivan
walk the tributaries ↓
Janet Jackson1980s · R&B / Pop / Dance-pop / New jack swing
Sivan has said hearing Janet Jackson's "Together Again" around age seven "literally changed the trajectory of my life," and catching her Hollywood Bowl show early in the making of Something to Give Each Other sent him chasing that same warmth across the record, centered on lead single "Rush."
listen: upstream & heresource: Billboard — Troye Sivan on how Janet Jackson's "Together Again" changed the trajectory of his life ↗
1997
Together AgainJanet Jackson
2023
RushTroye Sivan
listen for"Rush"'s warm, propulsive pulse and Sivan's airy, stacked vocal layers reach for the same untouchable, larger-than-life pop-star warmth he's said Jackson's dance singles gave him as a kid.
Robyn2010s · Electropop / Dance-pop / Synth-pop
Sivan has said that discovering artists outside the mainstream like Robyn taught him "pop didn't have to comprise what was in vogue" as he made Bloom, and when "My My My!" landed, press reached for Robyn's "Dancing On My Own" video as the reference point for the song's solitary, euphoric release.
listen: upstream & heresource: Vice — Troye Sivan on Bloom's influences, discovering Robyn, and Frank Ocean's poetic songwriting ↗
2010
Dancing On My OwnRobyn
2018
My My My!Troye Sivan
listen forThe pulsing four-on-the-floor build and the way Sivan's loose, freestyle dancing in the video carries the emotional weight instead of tight choreography mirrors the lonely-but-liberated catharsis Robyn perfected blasting "Dancing On My Own."
Frank Ocean2010s · Alternative R&B / Hip hop
Sivan named Frank Ocean among the touchstones behind Bloom, and critics reviewing the album reached for the same comparison unprompted — pointing to Ocean's Blonde as the closest analog, both records processing being a queer man in the digital-dating era with the same unguarded, plainspoken intimacy.
listen: upstream & heresource: Vice — Troye Sivan on Bloom's influences, discovering Robyn, and Frank Ocean's poetic songwriting ↗
2016
IvyFrank Ocean
2018
BloomTroye Sivan
listen forThe title track's hushed, conversational verses — Sivan just talking through desire without euphemism or a big hook to hide behind — sit in the same stripped-down confessional mode Ocean set on Blonde highlights like "Ivy," where the production gets out of the way of the voice.