Self-Proclaimed Talk-Singer Troye Sivan Samples Madonna On “Party”

First-off: Great video. Incredible video. Troye Sivan's clip for his new single "Party" opens on a muddy medieval battlefield, with narration from the wizened and immediately recognizable tones of Sir Ian McKellen. (Sivan has known McKellen for more than half of his life; the two were in a stage production of Waiting For Godot together when Sivan was 14.) The song kicks in when Sivan gets back to his castle and gets into a choreography-heavy bacchanalia. Be warned: There's some NSFW action in there. But the whole thing looks astonishing, and it really moves. The song is good, too!

"Party" is the second single from Sivan's upcoming album She's The Best. The first, the shockingly '90s title track, was one of our favorite songs of the week when it dropped. That one also had a cool video, which, like "Party," was directed by longtime Sivan collaborator Gordon von Steiner. "Party" is a hammering deadpan club track that prominently samples Madonna's 2000 anthem "Music." Sivan co-produced the track with Styalz Fuego, Tyde Levi, and Rob UFO, and the four of them co-wrote it with Luka Kloser, Elvira Anderfjärd, Tove Burman, and Leland.

In a press release, Sivan says, "Dance music sounds very different on a dance floor than it does coming out of your laptop speaker. The repetition becomes almost hypnotic, and I wanted to play with structure in that way." As for the video, Sivan says:

When Gordon von Steiner and I were talking about the video and the song, we kept coming back to the idea that partying is actually quite sacred, especially for queer people. Nightlife is often the first place a queer person finds themselves in a room where they're not the minority, so it becomes a really formative and liberating space for so many of us. And if letting loose is innate to humanity, which I believe it is, then surely people have always partied. We wanted to know what that looked like.. So we went back in time and threw one.”

Check it out below.

Just like "She's The Best," "Party" finds Troye Sivan in sprechgesang talk-singing mode. Last month, Sivan appeared on the Las Culturistas podcast and discussed the act of singing: "I am not fishing for compliments. I'm not that good at it, and I'm OK with that... I truly scammed the world, and the fact that I have the same job as Beyoncé is just an insane thought."

After saying all that, Sivan clarified that he's "a good, like, talk-singer." It's true! He is! I would also add that pop stardom is about a whole lot more than just singing. It also involves the vision and charisma to pull off something like the "Party" video, and Sivan has that.

She's The Best is out 10/9 on Tokky's/Interscope.