The pandemic sent him back to Melbourne and a life alone.
Now comes his best music yet.
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Just as he was adding the finishing touches, the pandemic arrived.
The idea came to mind almost out of pure panic.
It was a coping mechanism, a choice that gave him some semblance of control over his life.
So when the only option leftwas to plan promotion from that setting, it came naturally.
Honestly thank god I used to be a YouTuber he captioned it.
Its currently in stage four.
People may only leave the house to buy groceries or for one hour of permitted exercise a day.
Nobody can go outside at all after 8 p.m.
This is getting a little bit depressing now, Sivan tells me from his teenage bedroom.
He seems anxious, bored, tired, or maybe a mix of all three.
I just feel like everyone was taking their liberties to bend the rules just a tiny bit.
And it ended up catching up with us and kinda slowed the decline, he says.
Its a cold evening in Melbourne, now deep in its winter.
This just feels very antithetical to everything that Australia is.
But he has also fallen back in love with the country where he was raised.
Hes considering buying a house here and doing some kind of half-and-half situation.
The idea of starting a family at some point in the next decade or so sounds nice, too.
Maybe this has been the catalyst for some change.
It took writing through heartbreak for him to fully recalibrate.
He was raised Jewish and attended an Orthodox school.
Like many kids, particularly queer ones, in the late 2000s, he found refuge online.
His Coming Out video, filmed in August 2013, has 8.7 million views.
When I look back, its crazy, you know?
That period in my life felt like such a magical, magical time.
During the making ofBloom, Sivan had been in a relationship with model and actor Jacob Bixenman.
Sivan acknowledged his partner as the reason for its optimistic outlook.
Sivan is guarded when discussing what happened.
But hes earned their admiration.
We just get each other and are excited by each other musically, she tells me.
In A Dreamis a first for Sivan.
It is pure feeling, written in the heat of the moment, and has no features.
He cant recall the specific timeline in which the EPs six songs were written.
My mind was so active at that time; I wasnt sleeping that much.
It would become routine for me to wake up at three in the morning and stay up until five.
The day Sivan wrote the title track, he woke up crying.
The night before, he dreamt of the person he had loved.
For the first time in our conversation, Sivan wonders if hes saying too much.
I just woke up heartbroken.
song and grinding synths that take precedence over Sivans echoing, angelic vocals and gentle guitar interludes.
The producer-writer relationship the duo shares helped here.
He wants to challenge and take risks musically, which I love, Gorres says.
We have a mutual trust which gives us creative freedom.
Its crucial to create a safe environment where you might try crazy ideas without fear of judgement.
The happy accidents are oftentimes when the magic happens.
It almost didnt make the track list until pop maverick Max Martin chimed in and said he loved it.
The song is performing better than a lot of other songs he has released thus far.
Priority number one was to get this off my chest and survive.
The clockwork routine of these walks is all thats keeping him sane right now.
It was a rare slice of respite amid an otherwise loaded recording process.
You dont realize that its happening, but over time that becomes so comfortable.
I hadnt realized how comfortable Id become.
I was cruising through life.
And then something like this [heartbreak] happens, and it shakes you.
Little did I know that would be one of many wake up calls for 2020.
Another has been discovering more about his insecurities as a gay man.
Stud, a semi-sleazy club track, wrestles with the limiting ideas around desirability within contemporary queer culture.
It never really got to me until it did, he admits.
I was feeling really insecure about myself and my body.
Weirdly, I still have a secret Tumblr where I just followed porn and hot guys, right?
I constantly was seeing the same body punch in that wasnt mine.
Still, hes also become more aware of his own conventional beauty.
A twinky thing I get it, he says, uncomfortable with the idea of addressing himself as such.
I fully recognize that so many people feel so much more shit than I do.
I wanted to put it out on the table and talk about it.
Sivan is now en route to the grocery store before it closes, talking over the sound of traffic.
Hes not quite sure what his next record will sound like yet.
Im excited to find that out, he grins.
