Singer-songwriter Troye Sivan covers
Billboard's first-ever Pride issue.
The 23-year-old Sivan drops his
sophomore album Bloom on August 31. He also appears in the
upcoming LGBT drama Boy, Erased, which arrives in theaters in
September.
(Related: Garrard
Conley says dad gave him choice of being disowned or subjected to
“ex-gay” therapy.)
In the issue, Sivan, who grew up in
Perth, Australia, talked about having a relationship with an older
man at the age of 17 and writing a song about it.
“I’m worried because I don’t want
to ever come across that I’m condoning that or anything like it,”
Sivan
said. “But I felt, greater than all of those worries, a
responsibility to tell that true story – of the curious gay kid who
puts himself in some kind of shady situation to find a connection,
like all of us crave.”
Billboard described Sivan as
“the embodiment of an emerging mainstream culture.”
“I do feel a little bit like a guinea
pig sometimes,” he said. “That the world or the press or whatever
is sort of using me and a bunch of other young people right now as
education points, [like] we’re teaching the world about all of
these different things.”
(Related: Adam
Lambert “loving” Troye Sivan's “Bloom,” Performs duet with
Melissa Etheridge.)