Troye Sivan

“When management and I were able to see him perform for the first time in the rehearsal studio, we were just blown away,” CAA’s Brian Greenbaum told Pollstar. “With his online presence with all of the videos he was producing, and his acting career, he was already very natural and very comfortable. We knew we could put him in real venues and real markets right away.”

The 20-year-old’s debut Blue Neighborhood, which he described in a high-profile Out Magazine feature as “mostly singing about boys,” dropped in December to critical acclaim and comparisons to Lorde and Taylor Swift.

At age 12 he started making videos on YouTube, where he came out to the world, and has become such a celebrity that fans obsess over who he may or may not be dating. 

His first major headline tour this spring “sold out instantly across the board,” according to Greenbaum, including multiple nights at the 9:30 Club, Chicago’s House of Blues and the Belasco Theatre in Los Angeles.

“We started off last year doing some smaller shows in select markets,” Greenbaum said.  “Even though he was garnering a lot of attention from all the online activity, and obviously through his music and the single, we still were treating him as a brand new artist in terms of touring. We wanted to make sure we were playing the right venues, making right moves and building him in the right way.”

Sivan will embark on another U.S. headline tour in October, taking in major venues including the Hollywood Palladium (two nights), Terminal 5 in New York (also two nights) and The Tabernacle in Atlanta.

“It doesn’t matter whether Europe, in Australia, or the U.S., I think kids in that certain age group really identify with him,” Greenbaum said. “He has an ability to write songs and connect with an audience in a way that many people who have done it for years don’t.”