NewYearsDayProject | a song a day blog

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 fr

On   December 4, 2015,  Troye Sivan  released his wildly successful first LP,  Blue  Neighbourhood .  Building a large Internet fanbase,  Blue Neighbourhood   peaked at #7  on the Billboard Hot 100 charts. The standard edition of  Blue Neighbourhood   contained  3 of the 10 songs from the previously released  Wild  EP . The LP, though, gave Sivan his first US Top 40 single, " Youth ." Four of the ten songs on  Blue   were singles, starting with " Wild ," a remix of which was rereleased with guest vocals by Alessi a   Cara as Sivan's fourth single from the album, which was a major hit in South Korea.     TRUTH RUNS WILD.  The final single, " Heaven ," was released on October 17, 2016. The  Jack Antonoff -produced single features a second verse from fellow Australian pop star,  Betty Who . After Sivan came out in a YouTube video in August of 2013, he became an LGBTQ+ icon, as he processed his sexuality in the lyrics of his music. Part of the promotion f

Following  Blue Neighbourhood ,   Troye Sivan released another collection of songs celebrating queer love in 2018. This time,  Bloom   was less about love in the abstract and more about sex. Songs like the  title track  dealing with anal sex, the Apple Music edition of the album's opener " Seventeen " recalling how the singer lost his virginity to an older man on Grindr when he was seventeen, to a song about his boyfriend who "Tastes like  Lucky Strikes " may take a few listens to understand the euphemisms. SHINE ON, DIAMOND.   Bloom  holds an 85% on  Meta-Critic , meaning that most reviews were favorable. In America, though, Sivan's music mostly is confined to the LGBTQ+ community,  and  Bloom  didn't make a splash in the mainstream pop market. But looking at the promotion, Sivan's team clearly had the young star's sights on conquering the charts.  A track with Ariana Grande , a performance, albeit a polarizing performance, on  Saturday Night

Spring is a time of youth and renewed life. Flowers are blooming and pollen is swimming in the breeze. We have seen this happen year in and year out, perhaps never really thinking about how Mother Earth is regenerating herself. Indeed sex is all around us as the bees inseminate the flowers in the garden. The vibrancy of springtime in a garden is an appropriate cloak for today's song as Troye Sivan wraps the metaphor of young horniness in the beauty of the natural world in the title track to his second record Bloom . While Sivan's track is undeniably queer, the journey into the garden feels universal--a trip that all will take when leaving youth behind. TAKE A TRIP INTO MY GARDEN.   Troye Sivan's sophomore record, Bloom, takes the singer-songwriter into more adult themes. The singer's previous work Blue Neighbourhood intentionally steered away from overtly sexual topics. When Sivan made the music video trilogy "Wild," "Fools," and "Talk You Dow

Following up Blue Neighbourhood ,   Troye Sivan released another collection of songs celebrating queer love in 2018. This time, Bloom was less about love in the abstract and more about sex. Songs like the title track dealing with anal sex, the Apple Music edition of the album's opener " Seventeen " recalling how the singer lost his virginity to an older man on Grindr when he was seventeen, to a song about his boyfriend who "Tastes like Lucky Strikes " may take a few listens to understand the euphemisms. SHINE ON, DIAMOND.  Bloom holds an 85% on Meta-Critic , meaning that most reviews were favorable. In America, though, Sivan's music mostly is confined to the LGBTQ+ community,  and  Bloom  didn't make a splash in the mainstream pop market. But looking at the promotion, Sivan's team clearly had the young star's sights on conquering the charts. A track with Ariana Grande , a performance, albeit a polarizing performance, on Saturday Night Live ,