Everyone has that one friend: the one who refuses to leave The Hive even after you’ve had several drinks spilt on you, are beginning to smell like BO, and have third-wheeled too many make-out sessions without receiving one yourself. Regardless, the party never stops for Troye Sivan.
Sivan refuses to sing, instead speaking his lines, boasting of relentless partying: at the “park,” “restaurant,” “club,” “in the bush,” “under the bridge,” “in the day,” and “in my house.” His use of a Madonna sample from her 2000 hit single ‘Music’ doesn’t even save it. Sivan sings that music “makes the people come together” and “mix[es] the bourgeoisie and the rebel.” This is the most lyrically complex moment of the song, and still they sound part of a nursery rhyme.
A nursery rhyme, at least, has a sense of musicality, but ‘Party’ has no such rhythm. This is a song without music. When Sivan does sing, he makes a half-hearted comment on capitalism, not unlike Charli xcx’s ‘Card Declined’ where she sings “let’s go shopping, I’ll buy a handbag… a new personality.” In both cases, the allusions reek of pseudo-intellectualism, only emphasised by their tone of indifference. Perhaps this musical era we have entered into, in which songs are best unsung, reflects a wider generational shift towards nihilism. Troye Sivan, like much of our generation, is tired, or afraid, to be seen trying too hard and failing.
At the VMAs, Troye and Charli walked out on stage to present an award together, with deadpan, careless expressions and lazy, sauntering walks. Lazy is how ‘Party’ feels in essence — the robotic quality of Sivan’s voice resembles a voice memo hastily clipped together on GarageBand, with grating synths and sound effects.
Those rare few who did in fact enjoy ‘Party’ boast of knowing and getting something about it that others don’t. And perhaps they’re right; perhaps there is a mysterious quality there which I’ve neglected in my listening. I’d be delighted if someone could point it out for me. The optimists speculate that “maybe they’ll get used to it.” Sadly, I can confirm that I did not get ‘used’ to it. Not on my second listen, nor my third, or fourth. In fact, further listening escalated my slight frustration into a deep festering hatred of the song — and, if there is a party happening, then I’ve yet to be let in.
Raph_PH, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
