Troye Sivan wonders if he’d be more commercially successful if he wasn’t ‘in your face gay’

30th January 2019

Troye Sivan has opened up to fellow openly gay pop star Will Young about LGBTQ people achieving mainstream success in music.

Despite having millions of fans the world over, the Aussie singer-songwriter admitted that he sometimes wonders if his sexual orientation prevents him from connecting with a wider audience.

“I have a great management team and great label, and I haven’t had this conversation with anyone else in fear because I hate it, hate it, hate it when pop stars sound bitter, or blame any sort of lack of success on anything other than for themselves,” he said to Will Young and Chris Sweeney on their Homo Sapiens podcast.

“I don’t want to come across like I’m saying that at all, but this just feels like a safe space where we can have an open conversation.”

Troye continued: “Part of me wonders sometimes if I would be more commercially successful if I wasn’t gay or not as ‘in your face gay’.

“I think we’re in a really interesting time in music right now where we are seeing more and more queer artists pop up, but we don’t have a queer Taylor Swift, we don’t have a queer Rihanna, or a queer Beyoncé. It’s not there yet I don’t think, though it feels very exciting to be where we are, I still feel like there’s a really tall mountain to climb.

“Sometimes it can be frustrating because I’m giving my all and not having some humongous radio smash all over the world. 100% could just be on the music, maybe the music just isn’t good enough, maybe the world is obsessed with hip hop right now and I’m making the furthest thing from hip hop.

“It could be a myriad other things, but a part of me wonders sometimes, is the world actually ready right now for what I’m trying to be?”

You can listen to Troye Sivan’s full conversation with Will Young and Chris Sweeney on the first Homo Sapiens episode of series three, below.

For their third outing of Homo Sapiens, Will and Chris have left their homeland of the UK to travel the US for a series of conversations around the LGBTQ experience Stateside.

They will still be speaking with homegrown talent throughout the series, however, with special guests including Sam Smith and Clare Balding to come on future episodes.