{"id":921117,"date":"2026-10-08T22:20:15","date_gmt":"2026-10-08T22:20:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/921117\/"},"modified":"2026-10-08T22:20:15","modified_gmt":"2026-10-08T22:20:15","slug":"how-troye-sivan-landed-madonna-and-sir-ian-mckellen-on-one-album","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/921117\/","title":{"rendered":"How Troye Sivan landed Madonna and Sir Ian McKellen on one album"},"content":{"rendered":"

Troye Sivan has felt the rush<\/a> and isn’t slowing down anytime soon.<\/p>\n

His fourth album, She’s The Best, has pushed the 31-year-old singer-songwriter further from his YouTube roots<\/a> and deeper into the inner circle of “it girls” within modern alternative pop.<\/p>\n

Hear and read more from triple j<\/a><\/p>\n

triple j brings you the best new music from Australia and around the world. Discover your next favourite artist here.<\/p>\n

Now based in New York \u2014 though he still has his stunning pad in Melbourne’s Fitzroy \u2014 Sivan has found himself out of the nightclub and keen to honour the people who always have his back: his girls.<\/p>\n

“I feel so comfortable in the orbit of these people and just want to celebrate them and say thank you,” Sivan tells triple j Mornings’s Lucy Smith<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“I think that, in the album, there’s a lot of feeling not very safe. I don’t know if it’s maybe because of work, it definitely has gotten worse over time, the feeling of just not really knowing how to exist in spaces.<\/p>\n

“Especially queer spaces sometimes can be just uncomfortable for me, which is a shame.<\/p>\n

“Knowing that the true safety has always come from the girls. I wanted to honour that.”<\/p>\n

Sivan is no stranger to collaborations, featuring on songs with peers including Charli xcx, Ariana Grande, Tate McRae, Alessia Cara and more.<\/p>\n

She’s The Best is no different, with collaborations with Nicole Kidman, Sir Ian McKellen and Lily-Rose Depp \u2013 and an approved sample from Madonna.<\/p>\n

Bringing Music to the Party<\/p>\n

Sivan initially produced second single Party without the sample of Madonna’s 2000 hit Music, until his friend and longtime collaborator Leland absentmindedly fused the two while they worked.<\/p>\n

“We ended up on version 17 or something like that before we started even mixing it,” Sivan says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“It was really just chipping away at it and at one point Leland started singing Music. And I was like: ‘Wait, yes.’<\/p>\n

“The song’s about partying and everything like that. Immediately it breaks down to this hot and heavy breath section, then Music starts to play and it places me in the club.”<\/p>\n

Loading Instagram content<\/p>\n

Going from dancing to Madonna in his living room as a child to having her music on one of his songs became a beautiful full-circle moment.<\/p>\n

“As far as the process of actually getting her to do it, it was random \u2026 she made it very, very easy and was down,” Sivan says.<\/p>\n

“It’s hilarious because my little brother Tyde is a producer on that song. So I’m like, ‘Bro, your first cut has Madonna on it’. I’m happier for him than I am for myself.”<\/p>\n

Troye’s knight in queer armour<\/p>\n

Party’s music video, directed by Gordon von Steiner, is an elaborate, cinematic castle party featuring Sivan’s siblings and friends.<\/p>\n

Filmed at Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire, two hours out of London, Sivan and von Steiner explored the idea that letting loose is an “innate human desire” and how that would look in the Middle Ages.<\/p>\n

\"Polaroid<\/p>\n

Watch Troye Sivan’s full chat with triple j Mornings host Lucy Smith on the triple j YouTube channel. (triple j)<\/p>\n

The final piece of the puzzle came in the form of a booming voiceover from the person most synonymous with mythical celebration: Sir Ian McKellen.<\/p>\n

Sivan’s only connection with Sir Ian was working alongside him in Waiting For Godot in 2010, when teenage Sivan was plagued with indecision about coming out as gay to his parents.<\/p>\n

“I was backstage with Sir Ian McKellen and all of these incredible people that I realised were queer and older than me,” Sivan says.<\/p>\n

“And I think it instilled a lot of hope in me.<\/p>\n

“I was like ‘I think the first person that I come out to in the world might be Sir Ian McKellen’.<\/p>\n

“Because I really wanted to tell him, just to kind of like get some advice or something. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t get the courage.”<\/p>\n

Troye Sivan had to truly shoot his shot to get Sir Ian to narrate the Party music video, more than 15 years after they worked together.<\/p>\n

The highly decorated 87-year-old delivered.<\/p>\n

“I get an email with a link, and I click it and I can see that it’s from his email and I download it and it’s a video,” Sivan says.<\/p>\n

“He sent me a video back, and it’s him in full Gandalf garb. He’s got a massive, long beard and in the beginning of the video he’s also talking like Gandalf. And he says my name in this booming voice, and I was like, ‘Oh my God, what is happening?’<\/p>\n

Loading Instagram content<\/p>\n

“But basically, he just sent me a really sweet video message of him saying yes, that he would love to do it.<\/p>\n

“I guess they’re filming right now in New Zealand, so he used the Lord of the Rings voiceover crew and mics, and then I was emailing with the production team of Lord of the Rings being like, ‘Hey, do you mind sending me the voiceover clips?’.<\/p>\n

“So yeah, very cool. Very, very cool.”<\/p>\n

Whether it’s the queen of pop or the wizard protector of the One Ring, Troye Sivan’s recognition of the people who influenced him throughout his life is deeply felt on this album.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It’s hard to argue with Sivan when he tells us they are all the best.<\/p>\n

Troye Sivan’s fourth album She’s The Best is out today.<\/p>\n

Hear Lucy Smith on triple j Mornings, weekdays from 9am.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Troye Sivan has felt the rush and isn’t slowing down anytime soon. His fourth album, She’s The Best,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":921118,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[64,63,134,489002,136,489001,488993,488992,488998,488999,488997,488995,488994,488996,489000],"class_list":["post-921117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-gandalf","tag-music","tag-music-by-madonna","tag-party-troye-sivan","tag-troye-sivan","tag-troye-sivan-ian-mckellen","tag-troye-sivan-interview","tag-troye-sivan-madonna","tag-troye-sivan-new-album","tag-troye-sivan-party","tag-troye-sivan-shes-the-one","tag-troye-sivan-triple-j"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/921117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=921117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/921117\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/921118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=921117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=921117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=921117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}