Out Aussie pop star Troye Sivan recently dropped his sweltering, no-holds-barred summer anthem, “Rush,” from his upcoming studio album, Something to Give Each Other.
The creative team describes Something to Give Each Other as a celebration of “sex, dance, sweat, community, queerness, love, and friendship.”
“Emerging from the tribulations of the last few years, Sivan found himself rewiring with the joy of human connection and dance music,” reads the press release.
The music video – 3.9 million views in five days – is a visceral, bold embrace of queer hedonism.
Sivan says the new track expresses “the feeling of kissing a sweaty stranger on a dance floor, a two-hour date that turned into a weekend, a crush, a winter, a summer.”
I like the track. Pairing the euphoric piano-house beat with slyly subtextual lyrics – “Take me to the feeling boy, you know the one/Kiss it when you’re done, man, this shit is so much fun” – the creative team knew how and what they wanted to say.
The video did have some detractors, though. Several folks noted the lack of body diversity. One example:
I adore Troye Sivan, but this “Rush” video is making me feel some type of way. It seems like a case study on how white gays choose to view queer people as a whole. There’s not a single fat person in the entire video. Just white twinks and chiseled bodies.
— Tomás Mier (@Tomas_Mier) July 13, 2023
Sivan responded in an interview with Billboard:
While many fans praised the video for its unrestrained portrayal of queer ecstasy, many others pointed out that the video was lacking a diversity of body types. With a cast largely consisting of either rail-thin or muscular men, many fans began to criticize Sivan for only portraying one specifically-tailored, stereotypical portrayal of queerness in his video.
“I definitely hear the critique,” Sivan says, sighing. “To be honest, it just wasn’t a thought we had — we obviously weren’t saying, ‘We want to have one specific type of person in the video.’ We just made the video, and there wasn’t a ton of thought put behind that.”
“Rush” is available now on all major music platforms. Look for the new album Something To Give Each Other on October 13.