Living your life as an openly gay person can be difficult for anyone. But pop star Troye Sivan has been publicly out of the closet since he was 18 years old, and revealed in a recent interview the struggles that come with coming out at such a young age.
Speaking to Attitude magazine for their cover story on him, Sivan said that as a 17-year-old living in Perth, Australia, he was looking for love in order to try and fit in. “All my friends were hooking up with random people at parties, and I just felt so left behind because I didn’t know gay people,” the singer said. “I didn’t know where to meet gay people.”
The “My My My!” singer, who came out to his family and close friends years before releasing his “Coming Out” video on YouTube in 2013, told Attitude that he ended up getting a fake ID and a Grindr profile in order to try and participate in gay nightlife. “[I] started to try to meet people who were like me, but you sort of are forced a little bit into these hyper-sexualised environments, and even though that’s awesome when you’re 17… I didn’t know what else to do.”
Part of that experience meant that Sivan had regular encounters with older gay men. He said that more than anything else, these trysts left him feeling afraid. “I don’t remember specifically but, because I was always so small, I was so scared to meet up with people because I was like, ‘I’m going to get killed, I’m going to get murdered by someone.’”
The singer has come a long way since his days of dating as a young gay teen. The singer gained significant mainstream attention earlier this year for the music video for his song “My My My!,” in which Sivan dances around a warehouse, regularly grinding up against and provocatively dancing with sweaty, sexy men.
But Sivan said that “My My My!” is just one side of the coin when it comes to the music on his upcoming sophomore album. The singer revealed that one of the project’s songs, appropriately titled “17,” directly deals with his dating experience as a young man.
“Originally the chorus of the song was ‘Here he comes/ Like he just walked out of a dream/ Doesn’t care that you’re 17,’” he said. “And I was like ‘uh, that sounds a bit predatory,’ and maybe it was a little bit.”
Read more of Sivan’s interview with Attitude here.