Troye Sivan on coming out: “The most important thing I’ve ever done”

Nearly ten years after the release of Blue Neighbourhood, this archive interview captures Troye Sivan at a pivotal moment. He talks about coming out, the responsibility of queer visibility, and why honesty in music matters so deeply to him.

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

“Certainly. Since the day I posted my coming-out video on YouTube, about three years ago, I have received many messages about it. I think that is probably the most important thing I have done so far. I have always wanted to be a singer and make music. Now I see that music is a platform to continue doing exactly what I always wanted to do, while being completely open and honest about my whole life. And hopefully, that will help some young people, and inspire people to keep doing what they want to do while still being LGBT. Hopefully, I can show them that it is possible.”

You have more than 3.7 million followers on YouTube; how much responsibility do you feel towards so many people watching your videos?

“I definitely have a sense of responsibility. To be honest, it feels more like an opportunity. I try not to let it stress me out or anything. I actually just think about what I would have wanted to see when I was about 14 years old, starting to understand myself and my sexuality better, and what would have been helpful to me at that time. And then I try to be that for other people. Growing up, I would have liked to see more openly gay singers, or more openly gay people in the entertainment world in general. I would have liked to see a normal gay love relationship on TV or in music videos, so I try to contribute to that as well. Living my life openly, while also speaking about things that don't necessarily affect me, but where I can use my platform to hopefully make a bit of change and difference in that space.”

You've said that you share every aspect of your life with the internet. But certain things must be off-limits?

“That's indeed true. I've always kept certain things off the internet, even unconsciously. My friends are mostly the same friends I've had since I was about two years old, people I went to school with in Perth. When we're together, we put our phones away and don't go on social media. I keep all my friendships offline. The same goes for things concerning my family. So there is definitely a boundary. I think I'm just more open than the average person.”

But you don't seem to be very open about whether you're dating someone, although of course there are rumours about who that might be.

“That is certainly amusing. The things I share always come from myself, so I've always been able to decide what I do and don't share. I've shared so much that I just feel there are certain things I need to try to keep for myself. I prefer to keep that side of my life private.”

Do you feel that when you make music, you can say things you can't say in your YouTube videos?

“Certainly, yes. Whether that's a good thing or not, I don't really know. I wrote this album as if I were writing in a diary. I wrote about stories and things that were happening in my life. Sometimes they were just internal monologues - word vomit - about how I felt or just my thoughts on something. I wrote it all down and used it in songs. I was really very honest about what I was going through at that time. Whereas I would never talk about that on YouTube. I think my lyrics are 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. Has anyone ever instructed you 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 already established my voice and my connection with the people who watched me and listened to my music. I just don't think anyone has ever tried to tell me how to communicate with my audience, or how not to communicate. They are very open-minded, very progressive, and they have always accepted the connection I have with my audience, and have never tried to interfere too much. It was something I was really scared of before I signed, and I had a few conversations 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 making the Blue Neighbourhood album?

“The writing process. I love songwriting, but I'm also a bit hard on myself. An album with so many songs can take a while to write. You have to get that special feeling over and over again. You have to feel like you've written a song that you're really proud of, that is honest, sounds cool, and aligns with the sound of the rest of the album. So many things have to be right, and that only happens occasionally. It just takes time to write, and that can be a bit stressful.”

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

“It was a combination of a few things. First of all, I heard the songs in that order for the first time. I thought 'Wild' is about the beginning of a relationship, 'Fools' is about that relationship falling apart, and 'Talk Me Down' is about the aftermath of that. That gave me the idea to make a trilogy of videos. Around the same time, I had just seen the film The Imitation Game, with Benedict Cumberbatch. It's a great film about Alan Turing. He saved millions of lives, and at the end of the film, his downfall comes because he is gay. I left the cinema feeling angry about the loss of his potential. Alan Turing's story is a very clear case of something an LGBT person achieved, and then their life ended because they were LGBT. It made me think of all the LGBT youth we've lost to suicide, and what they could have achieved if they hadn't stepped out of life. What would they have done with their lives? How many people could they have helped? When I got the chance to make three videos, I needed a message and I needed the three songs, and it all came together at once. It was just a matter of stitching everything together and making it happen.”

Which track on Blue Neighbourhood is the most personal to you?

“That's a good question. All the tracks are really, really personal. But there's a track called 'For him.' that is the most personal. In fact, it was so personal that I originally didn't even want to put it on the album. It wasn't meant for that at all. I just wrote it for fun. The track only made it onto the album because I kept listening to it, I thought it was a cute pop song, and decided I was listening to it too much not to put it on the album.”

Is there something you uploaded years ago that you now wish you hadn't?

“Definitely! So much! I've put so much on YouTube since I was twelve, that's almost half my life. I can't think of specific examples, but I'm sure there are plenty of things online 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'm excited to go on tour to as many cities as I can, play as many shows as I can, and see the world that way. As for personal resolutions, I often wear the same outfits! I buy something I think is cool, and then I literally wear it every day. Especially because I live out of a suitcase, so it's a bit difficult to keep things fresh in terms of outfits. So I would like to come up with some kind of system. Maybe I can have some sort of container in the tour bus or something. So I can buy clothes, wear them, and then put them in the container so I don't keep wearing the same thing. A sort of new washing system. Is that a new year's resolution? Maybe a bit of a strange resolution, but yes.”

This interview originally appeared in Gay&Night Magazine, December 2015.