Troye Sivan breaks away with “She’s the Best.”

I first heard “She’s the Best” walking to work Friday morning. The building sits off a busy road, on a stretch of sidewalk that probably shouldn’t be that close to traffic. Between the cars rushing past me and Sivan’s subtle vocals, I could hardly hear what he was saying. I thought, maybe this one isn’t for me.

A few hours later, at the gym, I gave it another shot. Then another. Somewhere on the walk back home, it started to make sense.

Sivan isn’t trying particularly hard for much of the song. His Australian accent does a lot of work here. At times, he sounds indifferent to the fact that there’s a microphone in front of him. I wasn’t immediately convinced that was a good thing.

There’s a fine line between restraint and simply leaving something unfinished. “She’s the Best” spends most of its runtime flirting with it. It leaves an incredible amount of space to focus on the story. Then I figured that the man who sings this song would rather us not know he’s there. On first listen, I wanted a bit more. But on the third, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

The people behind the track know their way around a pop song. Sivan is joined on production by Jack Antonoff, George Daniel and Styalz Fuego, longtime collaborator Leland among the songwriters, with Charli xcx slipping into the outro almost like one more sound you weren’t supposed to notice the first time around.

There’s something familiar about the production that I still can’t place. Is it a sample or just meant to sound like one? If it’s pulling from some classic, I haven’t found it. But it doesn’t need the nostalgia of an obvious interpolation to resonate. The whole thing sounds like someone jammed a speaker underneath the drawer of a cash register, somewhere between the big bills, Post-it notes and other castaways, while ethereal alt-pop plays in the other room. It‘s pleasantly comforting.

Sounds pile on top of one another without demanding your attention. The production gets busier and stranger, then recedes again, leaving Sivan to continue casually listing off the little details that make up this woman. He builds a person out of fragments. Adjectives. Habits. Brief moments. It’s a carefree yet meticulous and unmistakable humanity.

In case you’re like me and need a little visual persuasion, the video is a must-see. Nicole Kidman. Sasha Colby. A room full of beautiful people who look like they know about a party you weren’t invited to. It’s parasocial fodder and I absolutely love it.

Directed by one of Sivan’s frequent collaborators, Gordon von Steiner, who you may know from two of Sivan GRAMMY nominated hits, “Rush” and “One of Your Girls,” the visual reminds me of fever dream of the first 24 hours after a brown out. Not all of it works.

There’s a prolonged moment where Sivan just stares at Nicole Kidman. And I mean stares. It’s unbelievably weird. What is presumably meant to read as fascination starts to feel closer to creepy obsession. Maybe the discomfort is intentional. I’m still not convinced it is.

But the montage is where von Steiner absolutely captures me. Bodies flash across the screen so quickly that the whole thing starts to feel like a time capsule of evergreen queer history and the essential role women, drag, dance, and music have played in driving the culture around it.

The textures of the song suddenly make more sense against those images. There’s a moment when the production kicks up just as ballet dancers begin moving furiously across the screen.

Toward the end, something pops.

It reminds me of that moment at your friend’s indie show when the crowd finally lets its shoulders down and starts dancing. Natty Boh is spilling everywhere. Nobody is really dancing well, but for the first time all night, nobody particularly cares. The room begins to breathe.

For all the famous faces, the characters feel strangely familiar, especially if you’ve spent any time working in nightlife. They’re DJs, queens, best friends, and the coworker you’re always happy to be scheduled with.

Sometimes these people just show up. You start taking on life together. Loving together. Struggling together. You tell her something you haven’t told anyone else. She convinces you to do things you would never do on your own.

Away in college, I went on a spontaneous walk off campus with one of my co-workers. We were becoming incredibly close. Then suddenly I found myself caught in her orbit. 

Somehow, she convinced me to follow her down into a river. I don’t remember why I said yes. I do remember knowing I wouldn’t have dared do it without her. I wasn’t adventurous, but she had a way about her that made trusting her feel easy. So I followed.

The problem with climbing down into a river is that eventually you have to climb back out. I looked up at the steep, stone-covered hill we’d descended and had absolutely no idea how I was going to get back to civilization. She saw the concern in my eyes.

“You need to use your hands,” she said. “Just watch out for snakes.”

It was the middle of the night, I was wet and dirty, and had a 9am class in a few hours. But I watched her climb, stone by stone, and followed.

It was such a simple instruction. Of course I needed to use my hands. But she said it with the casual confidence of someone reminding me that I had signed up for this detour, that there was only one way out of it now, and that I’d probably be glad I came along once we reached the top.

I still think about that night. She was the best.

After spending his last album chasing what he called “perfect pop music,” Sivan tells implies his new material is an attempt to embrace something less calculated and more human. Listeners can expect a departure from the style of hits that define an a major era for the artist. This track is just the beginning, with the full project of the same name is expected October 9, 2026.

Sivan has spent the last few years proving he can make pristine pop with the best of them. But if rawness is what he’s after this time around, I think he could push it a little further than this lead track. Let it all crack a little bit more.

Sivan told Perfect that much of the album’s vocals were recorded at home, using a microphone on his desk, an intentional choice in a culture and industry increasingly defined by AI, correction, and the pursuit of technical perfection.

I enjoyed the last few years of overproduced, dance-heavy pop. I danced to it. I’m not asking for its funeral. But maybe the next interesting thing is hearing the room again. The stuff you might normally clean up before anyone else gets the chance to hear it.

“She’s the Best” doesn’t completely surrender to that messiness yet. But every so often, you can hear Sivan guiding us toward it. If this is indicative of what’s to come, count me in.