A Madonna Sample Runs Through Troye Sivan's Party

Troye Sivan in the video for Party

The production choice that defines “Party” is a borrowed one: a sample of Madonna’s 2000 single “Music” threads through the whole track. Troye Sivan released the song on 18 September as the second single from his fourth studio album, She’s the Best, which arrives on 9 October, and the sample signals where it is aimed before a word is sung. This is a record built for the dance floor.

According to Universal Music’s announcement, Sivan wanted “Party” to capture the cyclical rhythm of a weekend spent moving from place to place, a night that keeps going from one location to the next with no real beginning or end. He drew on the bush doofs he went to growing up in Melbourne, the outdoor dance parties held in the Australian bush, and on the euphoria of hearing dance music exactly where it belongs. Universal describes the result as a hypnotic, euphoric ode to losing yourself in a good night out.

A Cast of Collaborators and One Sample

The credits are wide for a pop single. Alongside Sivan, “Party” brings together Luka Kloser, Elvira Anderfjärd, Tove Burman, Leland, Tyde Levi, Rob Feher and Styalz Fuego, with the Madonna sample running underneath all of it. On paper, a sample that runs through the whole track is a structural decision as much as a reference: in a song about a night that keeps moving, it gives the listener a fixed point to come back to.

Two of those names connect the single to the rest of the album. Leland and Styalz Fuego also worked on the title track, which was written by Sivan, Leland, George Daniel, Jack Antonoff and Styalz Fuego, according to the album announcement. Tyde Levi is new to Sivan’s catalogue: “Party” is their first official release together. “We’ve always made music in the same house. We’ve lived together for almost our whole lives,” Sivan said. “We’ve always naturally passed music back and forth.” Universal calls the track the first time that shared musical world has made it officially into his discography.

Where Party Sits in Sivan’s Sound

“Party” follows directly from the club-facing turn of Sivan’s last album. Something to Give Each Other, released in 2023, debuted in the top five of the Billboard 200 and at No. 1 on Billboard’s Dance/Electronic Albums chart, and generated more than 2.2 billion global streams. Its singles “Rush”, “One of Your Girls” and “Got Me Started” defined that era, which ended with the SWEAT Tour he co-headlined with Charli xcx in 2024.

Across his career, Sivan’s catalogue has passed 15.5 billion global streams, with nine Billboard Hot 100 entries, three Grammy nominations and eight ARIA Awards, according to the album announcement. She’s the Best is also his first music since signing with Interscope Records, which makes the two singles released so far the first evidence of how the new label home has shaped the sound. Universal says those two tracks are “a sampling of the range of pop music styles present on this album”, which suggests “Party” is one setting among several rather than a template for the whole record.

A Castle Party Opened by Ian McKellen

The video for “Party” is directed by Gordon von Steiner, Sivan’s longtime collaborator, who also made the clips for “One of Your Girls”, “Got Me Started” and “Rush”. It is a grand period piece filmed at a castle in Berkeley, England, and it treats a night out as something close to a ritual. “When Gordon von Steiner and I were talking about the video and the song, we kept coming back to the idea that partying is actually quite sacred, especially for queer people,” Sivan said. “Nightlife is often the first place a queer person finds themselves in a room where they’re not the minority, so it becomes a really formative and liberating space for so many of us.”

The opening voice belongs to Sir Ian McKellen, who first worked with Sivan when he was 14, almost 15, in a production of Waiting for Godot in Perth. At the time, Sivan was on the cusp of coming out to his mother, and seeing an openly gay man who was free, proud and successful left a lasting impression, according to Universal. Asking McKellen to lend his voice to “Party” decades later connects two generations, and it gives the video a frame that the song itself only hints at.

The launch moved off the screen too. Universal says the single was marked with a fan event in London, where Smirnoff unveiled four cocktails inspired by the track, each named after a line from the song. For Troye Sivan, it was a fittingly literal way to put a song about nights out into a room full of people.

From TRXYE to She’s the Best

The new album is the latest step in a decade-long arc. Raised in Perth, Troye Sivan first broke through with the EPs TRXYE and Wild before releasing the albums Blue Neighbourhood, Bloom, In a Dream and Something to Give Each Other, according to the album announcement. Each step moved him further towards the club, and “Party” is the most explicit statement yet that the dance floor is where he wants these songs to live.

The announcement frames She’s the Best as a record that embraces contradictions, capturing him at his biggest and smallest, most masculine and feminine, and most connected and isolated. That is a useful lens for the two singles. Where “She’s the Best” explored the feminine spirit and the people who shaped him, Universal says, “Party” turns its gaze to the places where people come together to lose themselves, and perhaps, in doing so, find themselves.

What We Know About She’s the Best So Far

Two songs are out ahead of release day. The title track arrived in August and works almost in the opposite direction to “Party”: it begins with spoken verses before guitars, strings and synths build towards what the announcement calls a euphoric release. It celebrates the women, especially trans women, drag queens, feminine-presenting people and the feminine spirit that have shaped Sivan’s life, and its video, inspired by 1980s queer New York, features a cameo from Nicole Kidman.

Sivan describes the album as a portrait of his life in all its moods and colours, covering both the highs of recent years and the solitude and longing beneath them, and calls it the truest and most creative version of himself he has shared. The announcement says the record explores desire, identity, joy, loneliness and queer belonging, and is designed to be watched as much as heard. Between a spoken-word title track and a sample-led dance single, the range Universal promised is already visible in the first two releases.

What to Listen For on 9 October

She’s the Best lands in a crowded week. Numéro’s October release guide lists it among the month’s most anticipated records, on a 9 October slate that also includes albums from Remi Wolf, Greta Van Fleet, Sheryl Crow and Teenage Fanclub. For electropop listeners, the questions are practical ones: whether the club-facing side of “Party” carries across the full tracklist, how the spoken-word opening of the title track sets the tone, and how much of the Something to Give Each Other dance palette survives the move to a new label.

Australian pop has had a busy season. Last week, Kylie Minogue flew over the MCG to an unreleased Dom Dolla remix, and Sivan now follows with an album launch built partly on a bush-doof memory from his Melbourne youth. If “Party” is the album’s dance-floor setting, Friday will show what the other settings sound like, and whether the Madonna sample was a one-off reference or the first sign of a record that looks back as often as it looks forward.