Josh

I recently attended Troye Sivan’s Eventim Apollo concert in Hammersmith, with my partner. This concert was part of the Europe leg of The Bloom Tour for Troye’s Sophomore album ‘Bloom’.

One of the first things I noticed when I got to the concert was the amount of LGBTQ people/couples in attendance. Being gay myself, my partner and I often refrain from PDA when out and about due to fear of getting attacked or judged. Something as simple as holding hands in public is still a real issue for LGBTQ folks, even though the world is slowly changing and becoming much more accepting!

However in this atmosphere, surrounded by many other members of the LGBTQ community, Troye’s concert felt like a safe space. It’s a hard feeling to describe to a non-LGBTQ person, a kind of fitting in/belonging that I haven’t really experienced before. I haven’t attended any pride events yet but I’m guessing a very similar feeling is experienced at them. I will soon see if this is the case, as I have stall booked for Memeow Gifts (my LGBTQ inclusive greetings card business) at Warwickshire Pride in August! 😁

… Anyway back to the concert!

Troye Sivan’s frequent songwriter/collaborator Leland was the opening act, who has also written songs for artists including Selena Gomez and Allie X. I wasn’t previously familiar with his own music but was very impressed with his voice/performance and  have since been streaming his songs (I recommend Middle of a Heartbreak, Run Into You and Mattress).

Then it was Time for Troye! Troye opened up the concert with Seventeen, which is also the album opener for ‘Bloom’. Troye gave an energetic performance throughout the concert, as soon as the curtain dropped after ‘Seventeen’ he burst into the bouncy high energy ‘Bloom’ followed by ‘Plum’.

The highlight of the evening for me was when Troye sang ‘Heaven’ a song about coming out, while also trying to reconcile your faith/belief, “Without losing a piece of me, How do I get to heaven?”. Unbeknownst to Troye some dedicated fans had placed envelopes saying “Open Please” on every seat in seated areas, which each contained a paper flower. There were 6 different coloured flowers distributed around the venue. The instructions included with the flowers said to place the flower over the torch on your smart phone when Troye started ‘Heaven’.

To Troye’s surprise, when he started singing ‘Heaven’ the venue before him transformed into a rainbow sea. This was a lovely moment, pretty much the whole audience was involved and it looked AMAZING!

Troye also performed versions of his recent collaborative songs ‘1999’, ‘I’m so Tired…’ and ‘Dance to This’, which he managed to pull off without the assistance of his collaborators (Charli XCX, Lauv, Ariana Grande).

Troye came across as very genuine and down to Earth throughout the show, getting the audience to sing Happy Birthday to a fan in attendance and exclaiming how he felt like he was in the ‘Lizzie Mcguire Movie’.

Me and my partner had a great evening at the concert, which came to a close with the tracks ‘Youth’ and ‘My My My!’.

It was awesome show all in all and really refreshing to see the concert of an unapologetically queer pop artist, something we will hopefully see much more of in future, To quote Lizzie McGuire “Hey now, Hey now, This is what dreams are made of”.

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