Like a lot of people, Troye Sivan thinks Nicole Kidman is simply the best. The “Rush” singer proves it in the sultry video for his new single, aptly titled “She’s the Best,” in which fellow Aussie Kidman is the picture of elegant, effortlessly cool glamour as she strides with purpose through a dressing room filled with drag queens and quietly seduces Sivan in a nightclub.
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Kidman being Kidman, all she really needs to seal the deal is her hypnotic stare, which she aims at Sivan via casual, laser-focused looks while he performs in a nightclub. The song is the title track to Sivan’s upcoming fourth full-length studio album, She’s the Best, which is due out on Oct. 9.
The visual opens with Kidman embodying the song’s lyrics as she catches Sivan’s eyes thanks to her casual fierceness, strutting down a city street smoking a slim cigarette, her long, blonde hair mussed just perfectly while hiding her eyes behind dark shades and rocking a form-fitting little black leather dress and matching gloves under a chic, furry black coat.
The lyrics tell you all you need to know: “She’s walking down the street with her little thin cigarette/ Great smile, and a c-m stain on her dress,” Sivan sings/talks drowsily over an insistent drum beat. “DJs from Wednesday to Monday/ Don’t ask, she’s not taking any fu–ing requests/ Quick drag, a rouge cheek, a blush lip/ Eyeliner in her waterline and some… Contour… on her… t–s.”
As he sits in a café musing over his muse, Kidman struts into the dressing room of a drag show, striding with purpose by the equally glammed-up glamizons, smoking and getting their final touch-ups before hitting the stage. The team-up with Kidman is a call-back to the first time the two met in 2018 on the set of the film Boy Erased, a drama about a closeted young man whose Baptist parents force him into conversion therapy.
The song about an alluring night owl who is simply the best 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 (“Rush,” “Got Me Started”) directed the video, which co-stars RuPaul’s Drag Race season 15 champ Sasha Colby.
According to Rolling Stone, Daniel’s wife, Charli xcx, is featured in a snippet near the end of the song in a blink-and-miss vocal cameo murmuring the refrain “She’s the heartbeat bumping in my chest/ She’s the best,” as the song rushes to its conclusion. “The vocal that you hear at the end of ‘She’s the Best,’ it’s Charli,” Sivan told the magazine. “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 RS that the anecdotes in the song are a kind of collage and love letter to a number of women in his life who have made a huge impact. “To be able to have made music with Ariana [Grande] or Lily-Rose Depp, then touring with Charli [xcx] and growing up alongside her…I’ve always just loved being in the orbit of these women,” he said. “‘She’s the Best’ was the first time I wasn’t trying to psychoanalyze myself, and I wasn’t writing about men. The one thing that has been constant in my whole life is the women in my life, and the feminine people in my life.”
He also noted that he first got Kidman’s number on the Boy Erased set and that he’s kept the Practical Magic 2 star in his mind ever since. “She’s always just been such a picture of the divine feminine to me,” he told RS. “I sent her the song and I showed her some references for the video,” he said, describing being in a Zoom meeting a while later and seeing an unknown number pop up on his phone. “I let it go to voicemail, and then I see the transcription starts coming, it’s like, ‘Hi darling Troye, it’s Nic.’ I slammed my laptop shut and just ended the meeting.”
She’s the Best is the follow-up to Sivan’s 2023 LP Something to Give Each Other, which debuted at No. 20 on the Billboard 200.
Watch Sivan’s “She’s the Best” video below.
