I'm a gay man, but the great loves of my life have been with women. That's not a particularly novel nor singular experience: for so many of us, female friendships were our foundational experiences of love and safety, before we were able to or comfortable enough to enter the realm of romance.
It's clear such themes were on the mind of Troye Sivan as he was writing the lead single and title track to his next album, "She's The Best." On it, Sivan drowsily talks and coos about a woman he adores, describing her with both candor and awe: "Night owl and somehow an early bird / She kind of just stays perpetually tired." The psychedelia-inflected trip-hop beat feels trippily cyclical, staying largely on two chords that sway back and forth like a slow dance. The chorus is a simple refrain "That girl / that girl," softly sung with a sense of wonderment. If there is a moment where the track peaks from its slowgoing slither, it's towards the end where a pitched up chorus chants along: "She’s the heartbeat bumping in my chest" before the track ends as a double time rock diddy.
There's a relatable tenor here, where a gay boy's intimacy with and adoration for a girlfriend sways between fawning over her like a famed popstar, and the more usual tenor of close friendship. When he describes her as wearing "Eyeliner in her waterline and some contour on her tits," there's a trace of the dis-ease and flattening that can come with the idolatry of stanning your friend. But that kind of rapturous reception, the sincerity and irony of the enthusiasm, is part and parcel of this dynamic. So much of gay humor and sincerity is an insistence on extremes: your favorite singer is MOTHER; a time spent with a friend was EVERYTHING.
That sense of hyperbole is both played up and downplayed in the song's dazzling music video, which features such essential divas as Oscar winner Nicole Kidman, internet prophetess Blizzy McGuire, and photographer Anna Bloda, who is the topless, pasty wearing star of the album's artwork. Putting Kidman front and center is certainly the gag of the year for Sivan, who admitted to Rolling Stone that he loved Kidman since childhood when he was entranced by Moulin Rouge. But her side-by-side existence with scores of other women who populate the tone poem of a video highlights the song's softness. It's warm and inviting and hits me and my girls in the gut.
