As life continues to happen, everyone wants to leave behind a legacy within their path. It doesn’t matter if it’s one important event or multiple events, they want to be remembered. Troye Sivan is a 20 year old South African-born Australian who is well-known and is leaving behind a great legacy. Some people may know him as the actor who played young James Howlett in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Others watch the videos he posts on YouTube every now and then. Music has always been a part of his life and has helped him move forward in life as he had released his debut studio album Blue Neighborhood on December 4, 2015.

His songs has grasped the hearts of his fans with his soulful, tear-jerking lyrics as well as his emotional and melancholy voice. Troye sings effortlessly and breathlessly about his album’s theme of heartbreak but also declaring and sharing his sexuality. His songs include originality and vulnerability that not many artists are willing to expose to their fans. Within Blue Neighborhood, three songs – “Wild”, “Fools”, and “Talk Me Down” – each have a music video that tells a story.

“Wild” is the first song that opens the listeners to a story about two young boys being each other’s first love. From his beginning lyrics, “Trying hard not to fall/ On the way home/ You were trying to wear me down,” it’s saying that it was a slow love that was being created. The media usually views this topic to be around teens and adults, Troye creates the “Wild” music video to be around young children providing a romantic, puppy love kind of feel. The bridge lyrics, “You make my heart shake/ Bend and break/ But I can’t turn away/ And it’s driving me wild,” describes the mixture of emotions and feelings of love between the two boys. It is the meaning of the first of the three songs, to allow listeners to feel the connection.

“Fools” transitions the story from falling in love to letting go. The title “Fools” represents the feeling of being foolish for falling in love with that person as well as letting that person go. In the chorus, “Only fools fall for you, only fools/ Only fools do what I do, only fools fall,” describes how the person who falls in love just can’t win. When people fall in love, they could be seen as a fool to have fallen for that person as well as deciding to let go. Throughout the song, Troye’s lyrics include how he saw their future together as he sang, “I see swimming pools and living rooms and aeroplanes/ I see a little house on the hill and children’s names/ I see quite nights poured over ice and Tanqueray/ But everything is shattering and it’s my mistake,” but then the last verse reveals about how the future that he thought of wasn’t going to happen and that is it now all crumpled up. His repetition of the word ‘fools’ as well as his solemn voice helps create the second part of the story on how first loves are important for many people but there will come a time when you have to let go but don’t want to and you don’t know what to do. You feel like a fool and that is what Troye is trying to reveal. Since this story about his experience, Troye is showing vulnerability and humility but telling his audience how he felt like a fool when he felt first love.

The song “Talk Me Down,” is the final part of the trilogy is not from the perspective of Troye but is suggested to be from the perspective of his first love. While Troye still loved him but decided to let go, his first love could not cope with his life. The lyrics reveal that he felt the same but decided to end it. When Troye sang, “And I know I like to draw the line when it starts to get too real/ But the less time that I spend with you, the less you need to heal,” it reveals how his first love felt like he wasn’t right for him even though he misses him and still loves him. The chorus, “I wanna sleep next to you/ But that’s all I wanna do right now/ So come over now and talk me down/ Talk me down,” shows how he really wants to be with Troye but does not have any hope left. The title of the song “Talk me down” is the plead for help, for someone to help stop himself from jumping off a cliff. Whether the cliff is to be represented as physical or metaphorical, the song shows meaning of how ‘being in the closet’ can stress someone to harm themselves due to not having anyone to talk to. While a sad ending, Troye’s trilogy songs and music videos hold reality and truth.

Troye Sivan’s Blue Neighborhood not only contains collaboration songs with other artists and heartbreaking music but also his openness on his life. It’s an amazing album that I would recommend people who enjoy Lorde, Adele, Sam Smith, and Taylor Swift to go ahead and listen to.