Image by Tim Ashton //
With his euphoria-laced EP In A Dream blooming through speakers around the world, we caught up with the platinum-selling artist.
Imagine you’re Troye Sivan for a second. You’re one of the most successful musicians in the world, you’ve had an acting career that most people could only dream of, you have millions of followers, and you’re only 25 years old. In our heads we’d like to think that the success and fame wouldn’t change us, but in reality it’s hard to imagine you’d feel like a regular person when your face is plastered on billboards all over the world and your music is playing on thousands of radio stations.
Troye Sivan, however, seems to have somehow maintained a certain down to earth nature that you don’t see so much with modern pop stars, many of whom are prone to flexing/bragging about their story/status. He’s welcoming, polite and creatively-focussed – he realises that the attention is a bi-product of his artistic output.
In A Dream is a hazy and ethereal collection of tracks that sees him explore more expansive sonic territory than Bloom and Blue Neighbourhood, whilst still maintaining a melodic sensibility. It’s essentially a concept EP wherein he’s taken advantage of the short format to construct something immersive but fleeting, which perfectly embodies how many of us relate to dreams.
Having returned home to Melbourne from LA shortly after COVID-19 hit the US, he’s been laying low recently. Over the past few months he’s been restoring furniture with his dad, studying interior design and spending time with his family – not to mention a press schedule that we can only assume has been pretty relentless. Answering questions about every little aspect of the record and his personal life has got to get a little tiring, right?
So to buck that trend we opted for a bit more of a chilled interview and slipped in a few hypotheticals for him to ponder. Of course, he handled them like a pro. Check it below and head here to buy/stream In A Dream:
If you had to choose between putting out one album every 20 years but being able to act in as many films as you want, or being in one film every 20 years but being able to put out as much music as you want, which would you choose and why?
Definitely as many albums as I want. I think film is really fun, but it is also you’re like a cog in a really big machine in film. There’s just a lot of brains and a lot of directors, producers, casting and scripts, and that’s one way to express myself. Whereas with music, I feel like being able to dip my toes in everything from graphic design to lighting design for the shows, to production on the music, to lyrics and melodies, to music videos. I just feel like it’s a one stop shop for me to just creatively go nuts. And so, yeah, I’d say music.
If you had to listen to one track on ‘In A Dream’ once an hour for the rest of your life, which would it be and why?
Jesus. Oh my God, I’d rather die, first of all. But if I had to, I would probably do ‘In A Dream’, the actual song. Because I think it still takes me by surprise because I started writing it as a ballad, and then the producer that I worked with, Oscar [Görres], started doing the drums on it and I was just like, honestly, appalled at first. I was like, “What is going on?” And then he added this intricate guitar on top of the drums, it just made it so emotional for me.
It was that thing where you can imagine sobbing your eyes out, dancing around and spinning in circles. And it just really took me to that place and so, it still takes me by surprise, that song. That’s why I love collaborating so much because I don’t think I could have ever written that song or would have ever written that song in that way by myself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCHqIhiFmEY
’In A Dream’ has a really ethereal feel to it. Were the tracks built around that concept or did they just happen to all fit within the ‘dream’ theme.
I think that was just a common theme. That’s why I ended up calling it ‘In A Dream’ because the name sort of came last. I didn’t have the name for the EP for a long time. Without realising it, unintentionally, there was this common thread of the blurring of the real and surreal, and dream and nightmare, and reality and dream. It just kept coming up and so, it felt right.
‘STUD’ deals with body image and how we often desire a body type that’s quite different to our own. With all your success, do you still feel pressured to dress or look a certain way?
Yeah, completely. Especially over the last couple of months. I don’t know if people are feeling the same way. A lot of our work, a lot of our routines as far as working out or eating, going out and getting validation from being at the clubs or at the bars or whatever, all of that stuff has been taken away over the last couple of months. And so yeah, especially lately, I’ve been feeling that. And I’m really, really happy that that song is on there because I think it was a conversation that I have probably wanted to have for a long time, but didn’t really know how to go about it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LniYWYmNXiM
If you had to choose between wearing the same outfit for a year (it’s a magical outfit that never gets dirty) or having your mum dress you every day, which would you choose and why?
I would 100% have my mum dress me. She’s actually really cool. She’s got this sick black haircut, but sometimes she will turn purple or white just randomly. She wears these like thick-rimmed glasses every day and just is not afraid of color and not afraid to sport black either. She’s a really, really chic lady. She could dress me any day.
‘Rager Teenager’ is a bit of a homage to the wildness of youth. What advice would you give to yourself 10 years ago, one week ago and earlier this morning?
So 10 years ago, I would have been 15 and I would have been freshly coming out of the closet and everything, and I would just say don’t doubt yourself. Just keep doing what you’re doing because you’re on a great path and everything’s going to turn out really, really nicely. So just keep going and just trust your gut because it ends up working out.
One week ago, I would say, I mean, this kind of goes back to the body image thing, but just start exercising today. Because this week, I’ve gotten back on the train a little bit, or I’ve at least started to, and it wasn’t that hard. So just start, do some pull-ups or something.
And then advice to myself one hour ago… I would say don’t wear your Uggs outside because it’s raining and then they’re going to get soggy. And it sucks to have soggy Uggs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcnKG9-ANuU
‘Could Cry Just Thinking About You’ really encapsulates that dreamy, short-live kind of moments that the EP is built around. What was the last thing that made you cry?
Oh, probably writing some of these songs. Honestly. I don’t really cry that often. I don’t know if that’s a good or a bad thing, but I haven’t cried in a long time, thankfully. So I would honestly say, I know it sounds like I’m just trying to plug the music, but really, it was probably during the writing of these songs.
Sad fact, fun fact maybe, but I recorded ‘Could Cry Just Thinking About You’ in my kitchen. I just had a little microphone set up and I wrote it and recorded it in my kitchen. And I’m fully crying into the microphone on some of those vocal tapes. So yeah, there’s some real tears in there, for sure.
You’ve got a career that most actors and musicians would be quite envious of. Where do you want to go? And are there any other things that you want to do over the next few years?
There’s honestly so much. I mean, I really just feel lucky. Like it sounds mega cheesy, but I feel like having a creative spirit or having creativity, it’s just like the biggest, biggest blessing. And I’m so thankful because you – for example in the last couple of months – you get locked up in your bedroom for weeks and weeks and weeks at a time, months at a time, and I’ve still been so excited to wake up every day because I just have ideas of things that I want to do.
That could be something as small as trying to make the dinner that night or it could be woodworking with my dad, or it could be a film idea that I’ve had, or an idea for a new song or something like that. Or I’m super, super into interior design and I want to do some work in the design space. I really want to work in lifestyle and homeware is super interesting to me. Also, documentary filmmaking is something that I’ve always wanted to do and I think that’s hopefully going to happen.
I just think for me, I’m like, “Holy shit. People actually wanting to make my ideas and helping me make them happen.” And I don’t know how long that’s going to last for. So while people are here and while people are paying attention and willing to help me, and willing to give me money to make stuff, I want to do that and I want to keep going. And so, I honestly have no idea what I want to do in the long run. I don’t think I’ll ever pick one thing. That’s the best thing in the world.
