Troye Sivan - My My My!

It is 2018, and by now, the sexual orientation of a singer shouldn't really matter while judging their music. Except that it does. Pointing out that people like Frank Ocean, The XX or Tegan and Sara all are very open about their queerness while making amazing music help us to give a social context to how their ground breaking contributions are not only artistic but also politic.

No matter how we feel about Sam Smith's music, we need to give it to him that he is the first openly gay male pop singer (that presented himself like that from the very beginning, unlike Elton John or Freddy Mercury who had to hide their preferences for some time before coming out) that is selling millions of albums and filling stadiums. Troye Sivan might be slightly different, but his case is as important.

Sivan's success would have been unthinkable ten years ago and the existence of a song like My My My! would have only been possible amidst rumors of dating one of the Fifth Harmony members, and tweaks to the lyrics to make it clear that it was sung to a woman, probably its title would have been "My My Girl!". So the existence of a pop hit like this one, in its full context, it's a reason of pride and praise.

It is such a good thought track, charged with confidence and unapologetic sexual freedom, that it could have very well sit amongst Rihanna's best tracks, but in Sivan's voice it takes new connotations. It is a track about not escaping a feeling that happened to pop up unexpectedly in the middle of a fling, we know it's a boy singing it to another boy, that image of "my tongue between your teeth" becomes a powerful lust declaration: queer people are not hiding anymore their displays of affection, it's not something that you need to use poetic figures to camouflage it anymore, it's very literal eroticism happening in front of us.

Sivan is a model of empowerment for young guys who will see in him freedom to be themselves. He certainly is more aggressive than the syrupy romanticism of Sam Smith that mimics heterosexual love stories, but not at the point of really be scathing to traditional morals, like Perfume Genius. The best thing that could happen to Sivan (and to the world) is he becoming a pop icon that makes Super Bowl halftime shows and wins several Grammys, but we secretly wish that this abrasive track passes under the radar so he can always be, like Carly Rae Jepsen or Robyn, more interested in his music rather than its fanbase.