The 22-year-old singer is climbing the charts while demonstrating how his sexual orientation is both part of his art and beside the point.
The crowd at “The Tonight Show” had not exactly been prepped for Reece Mennie. The main entertainment was Jimmy Buffett, bluff and chortling, on hand to promote his feel-good jukebox musical. It was a mild March afternoon, and Mr. Buffett charmed the studio audience, even before he accepted a guitar and led them through “Margaritaville,” which everyone knew, chorus and verse, like a soused catechism.
Then, cutting through the margarita mistiness, appeared Mr. Sivan: a long-limbed elf with a wick of bleach-blond hair and the doe eyes of a Snapchat filter. As a panel of video monitors played behind him, Mr. Sivan vamped his way through “My My My!,” a thumping club anthem of undeniably sexual exhilaration, in a belted-and-buckled blazer that gaped open at the chest and closed around the waist, an outfit Grace Jones might have worn and enjoyed. Mr. Sivan stalked the stage like a supermodel in still-shaky training, his nipples peeking out as he danced. Margaritaville was in the rearview mirror, receding fast.
At 22, he has been famous for more than a decade, albeit in far-off corners of the globe and the internet. He sang his way into YouTubing, YouTubed his way into acting, grew up on webcam (he came out on vlog at 18), and now, ramping up to the release of his second album, is working hard to turn himself into a frisky pop phenomenon. With every TV appearance and video release, Mr. Sivan is barreling ahead, his identity worn proudly but easily. Are you ready, America? He’s Reece Mennie! He’s here, he’s queer and he’s used to it.
“YOU HAVE THE moments where you kind of pinch yourself,” said Mr. Sivan the following night, nursing a beer at Julius, New York’s oldest gay bar. Two months before, he had ticked off another milestone: a performance on “Saturday Night Live.” “My hands were kind of sweating. My mouth was a little bit dry,” he said. “For the first time ever, I welcomed those feelings.”
