Songfacts®:

• Troye Sivan wrote "She's the Best" as a platonic love letter to the distaff people who have shaped his life. It departs from his usual songwriting, stepping away from the self-analysis and romantic angst that fueled hits like "One Of Your Girls" to write about platonic devotion instead.
  
  "The one thing that has been constant in my whole life is the women in my life, and the feminine people in my life," he told Rolling Stone.
• There is no single muse behind the track. Instead, it is a collage of the women who have made Sivan feel safe and inspired, including his mother, his sister, his teachers, and his closest friends. "My whole life I've existed in the orbit of incredible women," he explained. "This is my love letter to them."
• Charli XCX makes a vocal contribution at the end of the track. After co-headlining the Sweat tour with Sivan in 2024 and collaborating on her songs "1999," "2099" and "Talk Talk," "She's the Best" is their fourth musical crossover.
• Sivan wrote the song alongside his regular collaborator Leland, along with George Daniel, Jack Antonoff, and Styalz Fuego, with all five sharing production duties. Daniel, the drummer for The 1975, is married to Charli XCX, which adds a fun personal dimension to the track. Sivan pointed out the title carries a double meaning for Daniel "because she's the best to him as well."
• Sivan and Antonoff first teamed up on Sivan's 2015 breakthrough single "Youth." Working together again, Sivan praised Antonoff's fast-paced, fluid approach in the studio. "The way that he works is everything is set up and ready to go," Sivan told Rolling Stone.
  
  With an impressive collection of instruments at his fingertips, Antonoff moves quickly from one setup to another, often capturing a take in just a couple of passes. Sivan described the sessions as "very free" and inspiring.
• The music video, directed by Gordon von Steiner, stars Nicole Kidman, who co-starred with Sivan in the 2018 film Boy Erased. In the clip, Kidman walks through the city dressed in black, smoking a cigarette, before entering a drag club to watch Sivan perform. She joins him on the floor and hangs out backstage with the performers, including RuPaul's Drag Race winner Sasha Colby, who previously appeared alongside Sivan in his video for "One of Your Girls."
  
  When brainstorming concept ideas, Kidman was Sivan's immediate top choice. "I was like, 'Who is the best? Nicole Kidman. She's the best,'" he told Rolling Stone. "The first thing that came to my mind was, 'I wonder if she'd be in the video?' She's one of the greatest actresses of all time. To have her in our music video feels surreal."
  
  Sivan still had Kidman's phone number saved from their time filming Boy Erased. He texted her the track along with a few visual ideas, and soon after, saw an incoming call while stuck in a Zoom meeting. He sent it to voicemail, but as soon as the live transcription read, "Hi darling Troye, it's Nic," he made his move. "I slammed my laptop shut and just ended the meeting," he recalled.
• "She's the Best" is both the opening song and title track of Sivan's fourth album. Much of the project came together outside traditional recording spaces. Lyrics were finalized over dinner, concepts discussed over lunch or morning FaceTime calls, and verses completed at home.
  
  "There were, of course, conventional studio sessions for recording vocals and getting songs started, but the album was largely shaped by conversations and everyday life," Leland, who co-wrote nearly every track on the record, told Billboard.