Last night Troye Sivan brought his mammoth Bloom tour to the Manchester Apollo and CelebMix headed down to catch the star’s set.
“This feels like coming home”, Troye Sivan tells the sold-out Manchester Apollo crowd halfway through his set (he’s actually already spent three days rehearsing at the venue). It really does feel like that, the fervour Sivan whips up in an hour and fifteen minutes is nothing short of sensational.
Hours before doors open for Sivan’s Manchester show, the second night of his UK leg, there are thousands of fans snaking around all of the venue’s four walls, then down the next couple of streets. You’d be forgiven for wondering where all these Troye Sivan fans came from, a couple years ago he played the Manchester Academy to 900 people – now there’s 3,500 in the line.
It’s a credit to Sivan’s music. As he ducks under the curtain to open with ‘Seventeen’, a spotlight and a microphone all he needs, his vocals are flawless. Once the curtain cascades to the floor and Sivan joins his band to launch into the shimmering ‘Bloom’, that sophomore record that was so critically acclaimed bursts into life.
It’s the mark of a great artist when stunning studio production can somehow manage to better itself on a live stage and Sivan is one hell of a performer. ‘Plum’ and ‘Lucky Strike’ are the most current pop songs out there, ‘Postcard’ is clearly a fan-favourite given the wall of sound it’s met with and the genius production of ‘Animal’ is something special live. Closing on ‘My, My, My’ is inevitable and the perfectly euphoric end to the evening.
By no means are these fans who have come out of the woodwork on the last album cycle, however. When Sivan introduces 2016’s ‘Heaven’ as his coming out song, a mother with her daughter embrace in solidarity and two teenage boys to the right shed a tear. The pop star’s fans have watched Sivan grow up, come out on YouTube, taken refuge in every word from that honest Blue Neighbourhood record, revelled in the triumphs of Bloom and now come here for something so much more than music.
From start to finish, Troye Sivan is flawless – one of the very best pop stars out there.
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