If Something to Give Each Other was the party, She’s the Best is everything that happens after the music stops. Troye Sivan‘s fourth studio album trades the sweaty, club-ready euphoria of “Rush” for something stranger, slower and far more personal. It’s the least predictable thing he has ever made, and also the most him.
That’s the real headline here. For a decade, Sivan has been a pop star who makes great pop records. This time he sounds like an artist making a record for himself first and everyone else second. For the first time in his career he steps in as a producer on his own songs, working alongside Jack Antonoff, George Daniel and longtime collaborator Leland, and you can hear the freedom in every left turn. Trip-hop, house, shoegaze, breakbeat and orchestral pop all share space across 12 tracks. On paper it shouldn’t hold together. In practice, it mostly does.
The biggest surprise is his voice, or rather how often he chooses not to sing. The title track opens in spoken verses, Sivan narrating a portrait of the women who have shaped him like he’s reading aloud from a diary over a hypnotic, looping groove. Guitars, strings and synths slowly gather beneath him until the whole thing breaks open, with Charli XCX slipping in at the very end like a friend crashing the after-hours. It’s a bold way to introduce an era, and it sets the tone for an album where talking, murmuring and confessing carry as much weight as melody. On “Troye Meets World,” that spoken delivery gets pitched up and run through the machine until he sounds half robot, half fever dream, a chaotic burst of energy dropped right after the album’s most tender stretch.
That tender stretch is where She’s the Best earns its score. “Sex Star” is Sivan doing what he does better than almost anyone in pop: yearning. He paints a vivid picture of the life he wants with a partner, every detail sharp enough to touch, and the longing is so specific it almost hurts. It’s sensual without being cheap, romantic without being naive, and it captures the album’s whole thesis in a few minutes. This is a record about desire, and “Sex Star” is desire in high definition.
Then there’s “FF,” the album’s emotional center and its most quietly devastating moment. Sivan has described it as a love song for a man he hasn’t met yet, and that premise does a lot of heavy lifting. Instead of wallowing in loneliness, he turns the waiting into something hopeful, even euphoric. The accompanying visual, shot on the beaches of Fire Island, matches the mood perfectly: sun-soaked, intimate and a little bittersweet. It’s the song most likely to live on your repeat list long after the album cycle ends.
Not everything lands with the same force. “Party” works as pure release, but its near-chant structure feels thin next to the richer songwriting around it, and a few mid-album moments drift more than they build. The sequencing occasionally favors mood over momentum, which is a fair trade for an album this ambitious, though it means She’s the Best rewards patience more than a casual shuffle. Closer “Lost Time,” with Lily-Rose Depp’s French vocals floating through, ends things on a soft, cinematic exhale rather than a big finish.
That restraint is the point. Sivan could have easily delivered Something to Give Each Other Part Two and coasted on the goodwill. Instead he made a record about loneliness inside a crowded room, about loving the women who stayed while the boys came and went, and about imagining a future with someone who hasn’t arrived yet. It’s horny, wistful, weird and deeply honest.
She’s the Best won’t hit everyone on the first listen. Give it a few nights, though, and it starts to feel like the most complete picture of Troye Sivan we’ve ever gotten.
