Gandalf Narrates Troye Sivan’s New Music Video


“Party,” the second single from She’s the Best, prominently samples a timeless Madonna hit
Troye Sivan
Photo by Kai Gillespie

Troye Sivan has dropped his new She’s the Best single, “Party.” Built around a prominent sample of Madonna’s Y2K single “Music,” the track comes with a risqué, baroque video directed by Gordon von Steiner. Sivan plays a medieval knight in the clip, which also features a voiceover courtesy of Sir Ian McKellen, who a 14-year-old Sivan acted alongside in a 2010 production of Waiting for Godot. That’s right: Gandalf himself narrates the new Troye Sivan video. See for yourself below.

“Dance music sounds very different on a dance floor than it does coming out of your laptop speaker,” Sivan said of “Party” in press materials. “The repetition becomes almost hypnotic, and I wanted to play with structure in that way.”

She’s the Best, Sivan’s follow-up to 2023’s Something to Give Each Other, lands October 9. He announced the album last month alongside its title track. That song also boasted an A-lister in its music video: fellow Aussie and Boy Erased co-star Nicole Kidman.

Read Walden Green’s (hey, that’s me!) track review of “She’s the Best.”

Walden Green is a music writer and cultural critic who joined Pitchfork in 2024. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, his work has appeared in Dirt, The Fader, and Philadelphia. He lives in New York. ... Read More
Staff Writer