Troye Sivan: “Coming out is the most important think I've done”

In december 2025 it has been twenty years since Troye Sivan released his debut album Blue Neighborhood. Twenty years ago, Winq editor Martijn Tulp spoke with Troye Sivan about his first album. Here is the full interview from our archives!

Do you get a lot of feedback from LGBT teens who were in some way helped with coming out or accepting themselves a little bit more, thanks to your videos?

“I do, yeah. Since the day I posted my coming out video to YouTube, which was like three years ago, I’ve gotten a lot of messages about that video. I think that has probably been the most important thing that I’ve done thus far. I’ve always wanted to be a singer and make music. Now I see that music is a platform to keep doing exactly what I’ve always wanted to do while being completely open and honest about my whole life. And hopefully that will help some kids out, and inspire some people to keep pursuing what they want to do while still being LGBT. Hopefully I can show them that it’s possible.”

You’ve got over 3.7 million followers on YouTube; how much of a responsibility do you feel towards so many people watching your videos?

“I feel there’s a sense of responsibility. To be honest, it feels more like an opportunity. I try not to let it stress me out or anything like that. I basically just think about what I would have appreciated when I was about 14 years old myself, coming to terms with who I was, and my sexuality, and what I would have liked to have seen. And then I try to be that for other people. Growing up, I would have loved to see more openly gay singers, or generally more openly gay people in entertainment. I would have loved to have seen a normal gay loving relationship on TV or in music videos, so I’m also trying to do my part there. Live my life openly, while also speaking out about things that don’t necessarily affect me, but where I can use my platform to hopefully make a big of a change and a difference in that space, too.”

You’ve said you share every aspect of your life with the internet. There must be something that’s off-limits, or isn’t there?

“No, there is. I definitely have always kept certain things off the internet, without necessarily even realizing it. My friends are mostly the same friends that I’ve had since I was about two years old, people who I went to school with in Perth. When we hang out, there aren’t a lot of phones or social media going on. I keep all my friendships off-line, pretty much. Family stuff as well. So there is definitely a line for me. I guess I’m just more open than the average person is.”

But you don’t seem to be super open about whether or not you’re dating anyone, though there are of course some rumors as to who that might be.

“It’s definitely amusing. The things I share have always come from me, because it has always been on social media, so I’ve always been able to dictate what I do and don’t share. I’ve shared so much that I just feel like there are certain things I should try and keep to myself. I prefer to keep that side of my life private.”

Do you feel that, when you’re making music, you’re able to say things you’re not able to say in your YouTube videos?

“Definitely, yeah. Whether that’s a good thing or not, I’m not really sure. I wrote this album as if I were writing in a journal. I wrote about stories and things that were going on in my life. Sometimes it was just internal monologues – word vomit – about how I was feeling or just my thoughts about something. I would just write is all down and use it in songs. It was really, really honest about whatever I was going through at the time. Whereas I would never talk about that on YouTube. I think it’s cryptic enough, there’s enough mystique around music in general, that you can kind of get away with being as honest as you want, without people knowing exactly what it means. And if they do, there’s no way to prove it.” [laughs]

You’re with a major label. Did anyone ever give you instructions on what you should and shouldn’t discuss? Or do they encourage you to be as open as possible?

“They just encourage me to be myself. I’ve been really lucky. My label found me when I had already been making YouTube videos for six or seven years. I had established my voice and my connection with the people who had been watching me and listening to my music. I just don’t think anyone has ever tried to tell me how to communicate, or not communicate, with my audience. They’re very open-minded, very forward-thinking, and they’ve always accepted the connection I have with my audience, and never tried to get too involved in it. It was something I was really scared of before I signed, and I had some discussions with them about it. But everyone just told me to keep doing exactly what I was doing. I think they knew what they were getting into.”

What was the most challenging part of putting the Blue Neighbourhood album together?

“The writing process. I love songwriting, but I’m also a little bit hard on myself about it. An album with this many songs can take a while to write. You have to get that special moment so many times, over and over again. You need to feel like you’ve written a song you’re really proud of, that is honest, and sounds cool, and is in line with the sound of the rest of the album. So many things have to be right, which only happens once every while. It just takes time to write it, and that can be a little bit stressful.”

Can you tell me a bit about the video trilogy of 'Wild' -> 'Fools' -> 'Talk Me Down'? What inspired the story in those videos?

“It was a combination of a couple of things. First of all, I had just heard the songs in that order for the first time. I figured 'Wild' is about the beginning of a relationship, 'Fools' is about that relationship falling apart, and 'Talk Me Down' is about the consequences of that relationship falling apart. That sparked the idea of creating a trilogy of videos. Around the same time I had just seen the movie The Imitation Game, with Benedict Cumberbatch. It’s an amazing movie about Alan Turing. He saves millions of people’s lives, and at the end of the film his demise comes from him being gay. I left the cinema so infuriated at the loss of potential. Alan Turing’s story is a very clear case of what an LGBT person went on to do, and then being LGBT ended their life. It made me think about all of the LGBT kids that we have lost to suicide, and what they could have gone on to do, if they hadn’t taken their own life. What would they have done with their lives? How many people could they have helped? What kind of amazing things would they have done. All of a sudden I had this new platform of three videos to make, I needed a message and I needed the three songs, and it all just came together all at once. It was just a matter of stitching it all together and making it happen.’

Which song on Blue Neighbourhood would you say is the most personal to you?

“That’s a good question. All of the songs are really, really personal. But there’s a song called 'For him.' on there, that’s the most personal. It was originally so personal that I didn’t even want to put it on the album, it just wasn’t intended for that at all. I just wrote it for fun. It only ended up making it because I ended up listening to it a lot, thinking it was a really cute pop song, and I was listening to it too much to not put it on the album.”

Is there anything you’ve uploaded years ago that you already kind of wish you hadn’t now?

“Definitely! There’s so much stuff! I’ve been on YouTube since I was twelve, so that’s almost half my life. I can’t even think of specific examples, but I’m sure there is plenty of stuff on the internet that I… It’s not that I wish it wasn’t there; it’s just like watching embarrassing home videos or something.”

Any new year’s resolutions?

“My resolution for 2016 is a bit of a lame answer, because it’s work related. But I just want to go on tour to as many cities as I possibly can, play as many shows as I can, and see the world that way. In terms of personal resolutions, I outfit repeat a lot! I’ll buy something I think is cool, and then I’ll wear it literally all the time. Mostly because I live out of a suitcase, so it’s kind of hard to keep things fresh, outfit-wise. So I’d like to figure out some sort of system. Maybe on the tour bus I can have some sort of container or something like that. So I can buy clothes, wear them, and then put them in the container so that I don’t keep re-wearing the same thing. Some sort of new laundry system. Is that a new year’s resolution? It’s kind of a weird one, but yeah.”