The Importance of Troye Sivan
The biggest pop artists on the planet today, by nearly any metric, are Taylor Swift and Adele. Their styles, sounds and means of promotion are radically different, but Swift and Adele do have a few things in common. Namely, everything they touch seems to turn to gold. Oh, and both are vocal fans of a young YouTuber-turned-singer named Troye Sivan.
Sivan is 20 years old, Australian and openly gay. He makes brooding, synthesizer-heavy music centered around his low timbre. He's parlayed a massive, deeply devoted online following into a pair of Top 5 U.S. debuts for his two EPs, despite having very little radio play or mainstream exposure. Swift called his Wild EP, released in September, "STUNNING AND AWESOME," adding that "YES CAPS LOCK IS NECESSARY HERE"; later, Adele went on the record twice in support of Sivan, saying that this low-quality live performance clip "gave her chills" and casually mentioned him by first name in a new interview.
And, yes, Sivan's music is fantastic—the song "Wild" is a gorgeous, melancholy-tinged slab of synth-pop, while new single "Talk Me Down" is a Tumblr-generation anthem for longing. But there's more here than just trendy music. Sivan's success has to do with his unabashed dedication to being himself—which, from the beginning of his time in the spotlight, has been engrained in almost everything he does.
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