“Got Me Started” by Troye Sivan, Wednesday, October 18, 2023

If I could describe the music of this year in one word, I would say that the music of 2023 has been derivative. To some extent, music is always derivative and we could argue that there has been nothing in music since [pick a date].  But a year of derivative music isn’t necessarily a bad year in music. The music from quarantine in 2020 until last year drew on familiarity and nostalgia. Maybe this year familiarity has peaked with the shameless credited interpolation.

KINDA MISS USIN’ MY BODY. I discussed the shameless interpolations of David Guetta with “I’m Good” (Blue) and “Baby Don’t Hurt Me” and Jason Derulo’s “When Love Sucks” earlier this year. I talked about how both of those artists' uses of the original material felt like they were forcing nostalgia onto their listeners rather than letting it happen organically. But today, we’re looking at Troye Sivan’s “Got Me Started,” the second single from last week’s Something to Give Each Other. The song borrows the hook from a 2009 song by Australian electro duo, Bag Raiders’ “Shooting Stars.” Sivan only uses the first part of the midi riff of the song which went viral in 2017 as a musical meme, but fills out the song throughout the track from adding additional instrumentation and ebullient vocals as the song builds. “Got Me Started” begins with listeners remembering the meme, but the song actually transcends the meme. What starts out as a kind of music joke builds into seriousness. The nostalgia wraps the track, but ultimately the song becomes something new so subtly that by the end of the track, the meme is forgotten.

 

INCHIN’ TOWARD SUNRISE. With Troye Sivan’s Something to Give Each Other release earlier this month, listeners have a fuller view of the singer’s comeback to the album format. Both Paste and Pitchfork have reviewed the album favorably, the latter giving the record a score of 8/10. Paste, in particular, points out that Something to Give Each Other accomplishes what Bloom set out to be: Sivan’s sex album. Sam Rosenberg, the reviewer argues “Bloom as a whole felt too muted and restrained for what it was trying to accomplish.” Something to Give Each Other is a much more explicit journey into a certain queer experience. Personally, I’m not ready to give my opinions on Something to Give Each Other. So far the three singles, “Rush,” today’s song “Got Me Started” and the latest single “One of Your Girls,” a song about Sivan hooking up with a straight boy and the video featuring Sivan in drag, are pretty solid.  There is definitely a new push toward the explicit. I love it, but I also feel that the Troye of Blue Neighbourhood--the queer kid writing non-explicit love songs--is a genre of music that is desperately needed too. LGBTQ+ people need more diversity in representation. This is in no way saying that I wish that Troye or any artist would write inauthentically, and it’s certainly fun to live vicariously through these club songs. 

Read the lyrics on Genius.