Troye Sivan has released a new single called "She's the Best," and the music video stars fellow Australian Nicole Kidman as the subject of the song's admiration. Kidman strides through the video with deliberate calm, moving through a dressing room filled with drag queens before a nightclub scene where she fixes Sivan with a steady, unhurried gaze while he performs.
According to Billboard, the song is the title track to Sivan's upcoming fourth full-length studio album, also called She's the Best, which is due out on October 9.
The visual opens with Kidman walking down a city street, smoking a slim cigarette, her long blonde hair partially covering her face while she wears dark shades, a form-fitting black leather dress, matching gloves, and a furry black coat. The song's lyrics describe the character plainly: "She's walking down the street with her little thin cigarette/ Great smile, and a c-m stain on her dress."
The collaboration is not the first time the two have worked together. They met in 2018 on the set of Boy Erased, a drama about a closeted young man whose Baptist parents force him into conversion therapy. Sivan has described the women depicted in the song as a kind of composite. The song was written by Sivan, Jack Antonoff, Leland, The 1975 drummer George Daniel, and Kaelyn Behr, with production by Sivan, Daniel, Antonoff, and Styalz Fuego. Gordon Von Steiner, who also directed Sivan's "Rush" and "Got Me Started" videos, directed this one. RuPaul's Drag Race season 15 champion Sasha Colby also appears in the video.
One detail that has drawn attention involves a brief, nearly hidden vocal contribution near the end of the track. According to Rolling Stone, George Daniel's wife, Charli xcx, appears in a snippet murmuring the refrain "She's the heartbeat bumping in my chest/ She's the best." Sivan confirmed it to the magazine. "The vocal that you hear at the end of 'She's the Best,' it's Charli," he said. "We've found ways to work these women into the songs. I don't want to speak for him, but I think for both George and I, Charli is obviously a very, very, very special person to both of us, and so to have her on that song in some small way is very meaningful to us."
Sivan also told Rolling Stone that the anecdotes throughout the song function as a love letter to several women in his life who have had a significant impact on him.
