“Leave this blue neighbourhood, never knew loving could hurt this good.” Is a quote from the song “WILD”, which can be found in Troye Sivan’s rising album, Blue Neighbourhood. This album is composed of well structured songs mainly focused on the most overused four letters, love. Luckily, it’s not the cliche breakup songs or overly cheesy and meaningless love songs. Troye’s songs are written in several different views on love and really can be polar opposites. Whilst I was listening to this album, four songs really stood out to me: for him., EASE, FOOLS, and WILD.
One of my  own personal favorites is the song “for him.”, because it’s about a happier kind of love but it isn’t laced with cliches and hollow compliments. Troye really captured how love isn’t always like some sappy chick flick and doesn’t always need to be verbalized. The song also shows how love isn’t always visible to others in the lines “And though not everyone sees, we got this crazy chemistry between us.”. Now, that may not be the most poetic word choice, but it fits the beat better than “Our love isn’t entirely visible to everyone but I am deeply in love with you.”. The main jist of the song is that love doesn’t tend to work out like it did in The Notebook, with making out in the rain with a famous heartthrob, but it can still be just as pure. Love is shaped by one’s own reality and is usually comforting.
The song “EASE” is a great example of finding comfort in love. However, it’s not about a romantic love but instead a motherly love. Troye expresses being apart from his childhood home and the loneliness attached to it by comparing his favorite/most comforting memories to where he is now. Most of his lyrics in this song are chunks of conversations or fragments of sentences, making it take awhile to click, but it’s got a catchy beat that will make the words replay in your head until they all make sense. There’s no angst in the song like it may seem at first, just the longing for his childish days. Unfortunately, love isn’t always comforting. Sorry, kids.
Troye perfectly conveys the risk of love too, rather than following the cliche that love is only a positive thing and I commend him for that. His song “FOOLS” isn’t per say negative, but it doesn’t show love as this easy, happy thing to live with either. The lines “Oh, our lives don’t collide. I’m aware of this.” and “I don’t give a f***, I’m not giving up, I still want it all.” convey wonderfully how people don’t need to be perfect matches to love each other. Love is just a funky mixture of pros and cons.
Lastly, there’s the song “WILD”, which is a mix perspective on love. It manages to make a medium of love through the pros and the cons. It has a fun beat with it and talks about how even though love comes with struggles, it’s still a great feeling. It’s what really grabbed my attention on the album, with the quote “Never knew loving could hurt so good.”to match the easytune. The entire album has a broad spectrum of love- from comfort to risky, that is easy to follow and bob your head to, it may even make you hit repeat.