Troye Sivan has released “Party,” the second single from his upcoming fourth album She’s the Best, pairing a prominent sample of Madonna’s 2000 hit “Music” with a medieval music video narrated by Sir Ian McKellen.
Released September 17, the dance track arrives less than a month before She’s the Best is due on October 9. Billboard describes “Party” as an electro-dance track, while Sivan has explained that its deliberately repetitive structure was designed around the hypnotic quality dance music can take on when heard in a club rather than through laptop speakers.
There is plenty happening around that relatively simple idea. “Party” connects Sivan to Madonna, brings Daft Punk’s Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo into the production credits and reunites him with McKellen years after the two first worked together onstage.
Madonna’s “Music” Sits at the Center of “Party”
The most recognizable element of the new single comes from Madonna. “Party” prominently samples “Music,” the title track from her 2000 album and a No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100.
Rather than burying the reference deep in the production, Sivan makes it one of the record’s defining sounds. Pitchfork noted the prominent “Music” sample when the single arrived, connecting one era of dance-pop to a Sivan catalog that has increasingly leaned toward clubs and communal nightlife.
The track itself is intentionally circular. Its lyrics move between potential party locations, including the park, the bush, a bridge, a restaurant, a club and home, without settling anywhere for long.
Sivan explained that dance music can take on a different quality when it reaches the dance floor, where repetition becomes almost hypnotic. His comments accompanying the release describe “Party” as an attempt to play with that repetition structurally rather than constantly introducing new sections or building toward a conventional pop climax.
Part of the inspiration came from the bush doofs Sivan experienced growing up in Melbourne. The Australian outdoor dance-party tradition gave him a reference point for a song built around the feeling of a night that keeps moving from one place to another without a particularly clear beginning or end.
Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo Adds a Daft Punk Connection
Madonna is not the only major dance-music name attached to “Party.” Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, one half of Daft Punk, is among the production talent connected to the single, giving the track another link to an earlier generation of electronic music.
The broader credits keep things closer to Sivan’s own circle as well. The song brings together collaborators including Luka Kloser, Elvira Anderfjärd, Tove Burman, Leland, Tyde Levi, Rob Feher and Styalz Fuego. The release marks the first official collaboration between Sivan and his brother Tyde Levi, despite the two having shared music privately for years.
“We’ve always made music in the same house. We’ve lived together for almost our whole lives,” Sivan said of working with Levi, adding that they have long passed music back and forth.
That family connection could easily disappear beneath the larger Madonna and Daft Punk references, but it gives the record another link to Sivan’s own history rather than making “Party” simply an exercise in pop nostalgia.
Ian McKellen Narrates a Party Set Centuries in the Past
The Gordon von Steiner-directed video takes the song somewhere considerably older than 2000. Sivan appears in armor as a medieval knight, with battle imagery eventually giving way to dancing, flirtation and a queer celebration staged inside a castle in Berkeley, England. Rolling Stone Australia reports that the period-set video was filmed at the English castle and developed around the idea of nightlife and partying across different eras.
McKellen provides the opening narration, but his appearance is more than an attention-grabbing celebrity cameo.
Sivan and McKellen first worked together when Sivan was 14 in a Perth production of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. At the time, Sivan was approaching his own coming out and has since spoken about the impact of seeing an openly gay man with McKellen’s career and stature.
Sivan connected that history directly to the new video, explaining that nightlife can hold particular significance for queer people because a club may be one of the first spaces where someone accustomed to being in the minority suddenly is not.
That idea gave Sivan and von Steiner the premise for the video: if letting loose is part of human nature, people presumably found ways to party centuries before modern clubs existed.
The visual answers by treating the medieval setting with considerably more playfulness than historical reverence. Armor, castle walls and swordplay become scenery for the celebration rather than the point of it.
Gordon von Steiner Is Again Shaping Sivan’s Visual Era
“Party” continues Sivan’s run with Gordon von Steiner, whose work has become closely tied to the singer’s recent music.
Von Steiner previously directed “Rush,” “One of Your Girls” and “Got Me Started,” three defining visuals from 2023’s Something to Give Each Other era. He returned in August for “She’s the Best,” the title track from Sivan’s next album, with Nicole Kidman appearing in the video.
Universal Music Canada announced She’s the Best alongside that first single, confirming an October 9 release date and identifying the project as Sivan’s first new music since signing with Interscope Records.
The “Party” video is more theatrical than the contemporary spaces that defined much of Sivan and von Steiner’s previous work. Its medieval setting gives the pair a different visual language while preserving their recurring interest in bodies, movement, sexuality and communal spaces.
It also prevents the Madonna sample from becoming the entire identity of the release. “Music” provides the instantly recognizable reference, but the video gives “Party” a visual world that belongs specifically to Sivan.
“Party” Extends the Dance-Pop Thread From Something to Give Each Other
Sivan’s last album made dance music a much larger part of his pop identity. Something to Give Each Other arrived in 2023 with “Rush,” “One of Your Girls” and “Got Me Started,” before the era eventually expanded into the Sweat Tour with Charli xcx.
According to Universal Music Canada’s announcement for the new album, Something to Give Each Other reached the top five of the Billboard 200 and No. 1 on Billboard’s Dance/Electronic Albums chart.
“Party” continues that dance-pop connection without simply trying to recreate “Rush.” Where that single was built around immediate physical momentum, the new track leans harder into repetition and the altered sense of time that can develop over a long night out.
It is also only the second piece of She’s the Best that listeners have heard. The title track arrived August 14 with a different group of collaborators, including George Daniel, Jack Antonoff and Styalz Fuego, while its Gordon von Steiner-directed video featured Kidman.
The first two singles therefore share a dance-pop foundation without following identical formulas. “She’s the Best” opens with spoken passages before guitars, strings and synths expand around Sivan, while “Party” uses repetition as its organizing principle.
She’s the Best Arrives October 9
“Party” now gives Sivan two released tracks from his fourth studio album, the follow-up to Something to Give Each Other and his first album cycle since signing with Interscope.
The new single also reaches across several different periods of Sivan’s life and pop history. Madonna’s “Music” supplies its most recognizable musical reference, Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo brings a Daft Punk connection to the production, Tyde Levi joins his brother on an official release for the first time, and McKellen reappears years after sharing a stage with Sivan as a teenager.
Rolling Stone Australia identifies “Party” as the latest preview of She’s the Best, which is scheduled for release October 9, 2026.
“Party” and its Gordon von Steiner-directed video are out now.
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