No other song this year has inspired more unbridled joy than <person>Troye Sivan</person>’s My My My!. Like a pair of glitter-heeled boots, it begs for you to strut as reverbed drums clack and shake in the background. In fact, Bloom, the YouTuber-turned-singer’s second album, is soaked in this exuberance. Whereas before <person>Sivan</person> was meekly stepping out of the closet, embracing his homosexuality with brooding melancholia, Bloom dances around the closet as it burns.
On the title track, <person>Sivan</person> extols the virtues of sex with boys atop watery synths, and the <person>Ariana Grande</person>-assisted Dance to This sees him lean into kinky domesticity, love punctuated by prongs of desire and seductive shuffling beats. Both Animal and Seventeen creep up on you, the latter’s subversive subject matter about teenage sex with older men a pertinent reminder of the dark underbelly of the queer experience. He loses his way on the Sufjan Stevens-lite The Good Side, and What a Heavenly Way to Die is so saccharine that your teeth might rot; the better love songs are Plum and Lucky Strike, with their boppy electro-pop. Nevertheless, Bloom is a bare-faced record, thrillingly honest and defiantly queer, proving <person>Sivan</person> is one of pop’s most essential voices.