Troye Sivan’s “Angel Baby” incorporates aspects of 90s music into a pop ballad, focusing on a gay relationship between Sivan and his lover.
When I first heard the song, I didn’t realize that it was mapping a queer relationship. The only pronouns used in the lyrics are “you” and “me,” reflecting an intimate conversation between two people. Likewise, there is no indication to the gender dynamics of the relationship. Sivan sings about the individual that is his “angel baby,” who has drawn him from the darkness of his own mind. He likens his lover to the divine but gives no explicit reference to gender (although that could be a clue to the relationship as typically, Biblical depictions of angels were masculine in nature).
“You came out the blue on a rainy night, no lie
I tell you how I almost died, while you’re bringing me back to life”
There is a certain timelessness that permeates the song that creates a universality – even if the listener does not fall exactly within the scope of the story mapped out in the song, the yearning of the song contributes to the desire to stop time and stay in a perfect moment.
“I just wanna live in this moment forever
’cause I’m afraid that living couldn’t get any better
Started giving up on the word “forever”
Until you gave up heaven so we could be together”
The music video is much clearer with the nature of the relationship Sivan sings about, as it shows snapshots and intimate moments between male lovers as they traverse different iterations of their love story.
Different audiences can easily fit the song into their own ideations of love, as the song itself encompasses a more general yearning between lovers. And although the queer relationship the song is based off is clear in the music video, the different influences the music draws from still opens itself for interpretation as several different figures in what seems to be different roles) move back and forth between moments in time and place.