Song Review: ‘Take Yourself Home’ By Troye Sivan

After a run of successful collaborative releases with the likes of BTS and Charli XCX, Australian pop artist and emerging queer icon Troye Sivan launched his latest dance track ‘Take Yourself Home’ on Thursday. Co-written with frequent collaborators Leland, Taylor Parks and Oscar Gorres (the latter having produced the track, as well as the smash hit ‘My! My! My!’ from Sivan’s 2018 release Bloom), Sivan described ‘Take Yourself Home’ as “kind of a pep talk with yourself and the place you’re from. Grappling with your place in the world.”

“I write these songs as a diary entry, then as life and places change and relationships change, songs can take on a new meaning entirely. Clearly that has happened for this song with what is going on in the world right now,” Sivan continued in a statement. 

Melancholic and rhythmic, ‘Take Yourself Home’ is well-produced, as one would expect from a leading figure in commercial dance-pop. The opening verse exudes promise – emerging from a gentle start to layer organic percussion with vocal vulnerability (Talk to me/There’s nothing that can’t be fixed with some honesty/And how it got this dark is just beyond to me). But the song unfolds supported only through repetition of the breathy chorus, which should feel expansive but only acts to hamper Sivan’s singing capabilities. 

What limited progression remains in the four-minute song is traversed before even reaching the halfway point, leaving Sivan sounding restrained and almost half-hearted in what should be a climactic bridge (Well, it’s all waiting for you/And boy, I know you’re eager/But it just might destroy you/Destroy you, yeah). And whilst the dubby, electro-inspired outro is a welcome change in dynamics, it feels like a careless afterthought, and is an omission that the (much shorter) radio edit is better off without. 

For a song that’s supposed to be a pep talk, it feels much more like the internal monologue you’d have with yourself in the shower after a day you’d rather forget. Whilst it doesn’t feel out of place considering the current circumstances under which we are living, Sivan shines brightest when his music is not just anthemic and empowering, but also unashamedly progressive. Emerging from the cultural incubator that YouTube provided to many of today’s music stars, Sivan has staked his claim at the forefront of contemporary queer pop – and thus, his music and media presence holds unique power within not just wider social commentary, but also the younger generations that will be impacted the most in the long term by the COVID-19 crisis. Take Yourself Home doesn’t feel like his best effort, nor the right release, in a time of doubt and uncertainty – instead, it feels like a wasted opportunity to encourage and soundtrack a cautious optimism towards the future.

Continuing his collaborative efforts, Sivan recently held an Instagram callout for freelance artists to work on both new merchandise (with proceeds going to the World Health Organisation’s COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund and the Spotify COVID-19 Music Relief project) and graphics for his album art and lyric video, which you can watch here.