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Troye Sivan promised us the “gayest music video” of his career.
Then, because apparently that description was not sufficiently homosexual, he clarified that he meant “GAY gay”.
Well, FF has arrived.
Evidence has been reviewed.
Witnesses have been questioned.
Babes, the case is strong.
The video was released on 9 October alongside Sivan’s fourth studio album, She’s the Best, with director Gordon von Steiner placing Troye in and around an extremely aesthetically pleasing beach house with an extremely aesthetically pleasing man.
And much touching occurs.
Purely for artistic reasons, obviously.
What is Troye Sivan’s FF actually about?
For all the thirstiness of the video, the song itself is surprisingly romantic.
Sivan describes “FF” as an “undying love song” addressed to a man he has not met yet, or at least does not think he has met.
The song explores the weird loneliness of loving the idea of somebody who is not actually in your life yet, turning what initially sounds like a vow into something closer to a wish.
And honestly, relatable.
Who among us has not occasionally developed an entire emotional relationship with a hypothetical man whose primary character traits are “kind”, “emotionally available” and “excellent shoulders”?
No?
Just checking.
Troye said GAY gay, and apparently had a plan
Before the video dropped, Troye teased it on social media as the gayest clip of his career.
That is a fairly substantial claim from the man responsible for “Rush”, a music video which essentially asked: what if a sweaty gay club became its own sovereign nation?
But FF takes a different approach.
This is less rave-floor liberation, more glossy romantic fantasy.
Troye spends much of the video in close physical proximity to his male co-star, wandering through an immaculate beach-house world where heterosexuality appears to have received an out-of-office reply.
Pitchfork, reviewing the evidence, even questioned whether FF truly surpasses the keg scene in Rush on the official gayness scale.
Important journalism is happening here.
She’s the Best is Troye’s fourth album
The video arrives alongside Sivan’s new album She’s the Best, the follow-up to 2023’s Something to Give Each Other.
The project had already delivered some very queer pop-cultural chaos before FF even arrived.
Nicole Kidman appears in the visual for the title track, while Sir Ian McKellen provides narration for the video to “Party”.
Because when you are Troye Sivan, apparently your contacts list includes Nicole Kidman and Gandalf.
Completely normal behaviour.
Rolling Stone Australia describes She’s the Best as a record that retains the polished club-pop world of Troye’s recent work while adding more vulnerability and longing underneath it.
The album is horny, queer and surprisingly lonely
That tension may be the most interesting thing about Troye’s current era.
His imagery is sexy.
The music is designed for bodies.
The visuals are unapologetically queer.
But underneath all that confidence is a recurring desire for connection.
FF makes that particularly obvious.
This is not simply a song about finding someone attractive.
It is about wanting someone who does not exist in your life yet, while wondering what it would feel like if they did.
You can have the perfect party, the perfect outfit, the perfect beach house and the perfect man in the music video.
Then filming finishes. The song remains.
That emotional contrast makes FF considerably more interesting than simply calling it Troye’s latest hot gay video.
Although, for the record, it is also absolutely Troye’s latest hot gay video.
We contain multitudes.
Troye Sivan’s version of queer pop no longer asks permission
Perhaps the most refreshing thing about Sivan’s visual world now is how little explanation it requires.
Nobody in FF needs to dramatically come out.
Nobody stops the music to explain that two men touching each other is representation.
The queerness simply exists.
That may sound minor, but mainstream LGBTQ+ representation spent decades presenting queer desire as a problem, revelation or lesson.
Troye’s videos increasingly treat it as something considerably more ordinary.
Sex.
Longing.
Flirting.
Loneliness.
Bad decisions involving beautiful men.
You know, pop music.
So, is FF really Troye Sivan’s gayest video?
Scientifically speaking, this remains impossible to establish without an independent panel, a scoring system and perhaps Graham Norton.
Rush remains extremely competitive.
But Troye promised “GAY gay”, and nobody can reasonably accuse him of under-delivering.
The video is glossy, intimate, playful and completely uninterested in diluting queer male desire for a mainstream audience.
And the song hiding underneath all those beautiful bodies is actually rather sweet.
Annoying, really.
We came for thirst.
He slipped feelings into it.
TGM VERDICT
Is it Troye Sivan’s gayest video ever?
The investigation remains open.
Is it gay? Babes. Please.
