Last week, Australian pop singer Troye Sivan told British GQ he’d spent the previous few years discovering that he loves “people … community, and sex.” And, perhaps most importantly: “I really, really love to party.” “Rush,” his sultry lead single to his upcoming album Something to Give Each Other, celebrates all these things: It’s a pop-house heater, named for the ubiquitous brand of poppers, that treats sex and partying as a practically religious act. Conceptually, that’s nothing new—but 28-year-old Sivan, already an expert at making winky, slyly subtextual pop songs, manages to inject this trope with virility, producing a sublime, orgiastic summer anthem in the process.
Inspired by nights spent at the gay clubs on Melbourne’s Smith Street—shout out to Sircuit, a queer institution that’s both rickety and heavenly—“Rush” is unconcerned with anything but pure ecstasy. Its hook taps into the latent horniness and homoeroticism of a football chant—a chorus of men sing “I feel the rush/Addicted to your touch” beneath Sivan’s feathery falsetto—and the song’s exhilarating piano-house beat rarely lets up. Unlike past bangers like “Bloom” and “Stud,” there’s little innuendo here: “Take me to the feeling boy, you know the one/Kiss it when you’re done, man, this shit is so much fun.”
