Blue Neighbourhood is Troye Sivan's debut studio album that was released on December 4, 2015 by EMI Music Australia and Capitol Records America.
The album is preceded by Sivan's fourth extended play, "Wild" (which served as a six-song opening installment to "Blue Neighbourhood").
Tracklisting[]
- Wild 3:47
- Bite 3:06
- Fools 3:40
- Ease 3:33
- The Quiet 3:46
- DKLA 4:15
- Talk Me Down 3:57
- Cool 3:21
- Heaven 4:21
- Youth 3:05
- Lost Boy 3:43
- For Him 3:29
- Suburbia 3:53
- Too Good 3:44
- Blue 3:31
- Wild (XXYYXX Remix) 3:32
Promotion[]
On October 13, 2015, Sivan revealed that "Wild" served as an opening introduction to the album.
Pre-orders for the album opened on October 15, 2015, with the album reaching #1 within hours on the iTunes Store in ten countries, including the United States.
"Talk Me Down" was included as a promotional single to those who pre-ordered the album; it was the only previously unreleased song made available before release. Those who had already purchased "Wild" received a discount to purchase "Blue Neighbourhood."
Sivan also launched merchandise bundles on his site, selling jumpers with the album logo, candles scented to match the mood of his songs, CDs, vinyl, posters, digital downloads, bags and notebooks.
On May 22, 2015, he performed at the 2016 Billboard Music Awards.
On August 28, 2015, Sivan performed at the pre-show of the 2016 MTV Video Music Awards. He embarked on two concert tours to promote the album: the first is the Blue Neighbourhood Tour and later the Suburbia Tour.
Chart Performance[]
"Blue Neighbourhood" debuted at #6 in Australia and #7 in the United States, selling 65,000 album-equivalent units (55,000 coming from pure album sales), becoming his third release to debut inside the top 10.
In the United States that was his best sales week, despite having the lowest peak of all his albums and EPs.
Critical Reception[]
At Metacritic (which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics), the album received an average score of 80, based on 4 reviews, indicating "generally favourable reviews".
Everett True from The Guardian gave the album five stars, commenting that "it is difficult to find fault with Blue Neighbourhood" and praising Sivan for "capturing the sound of now so well."
Neil Z. Yeung from AllMusic praised Sivan's "sultry and effortless, wounded and breathless" voice as well as noting the album's themes of "heartbreak and affirmation" that make it "a sparkling, triumphant experience."
Writing for Billboard, Kenneth Partridge commented that "in lieu of originality, Sivan sells vulnerability" as well as comparing the album's instrumentation to those of Lorde and Taylor Swift.
Bernard Zuel from The Sydney Morning Herald described Sivan as having a "coffee-and-cream voice [...] artfully caught between childhood and adulthood."
Writers for Herald Sun praised Sivan's voice, calling it "fearless and honest in a way most pop stars aren't" as well as noting the openness of the album's lyrical content that does "not [shy] away from pronouns like many before him."
Jules Lefevre from Rolling Stone Australia commenting that Sivan's vocals "[hover] amid electronic production that manages to be densely intricate and helium light" and that he "delivers these quiet gems of young wisdom with enough humility so as to be endearing rather than precocious."