The first time I heard Dove Cameron’s “Boyfriend” on the radio, I thought it was Billie Eilish and I thought “wow, this is a bop!” Dove’s voice is very Billie-esque, although Billie is more of a whisper-singer and Dove isn’t. In any case, I suspect a lot of people now “know” Dove Cameron because of the success of “Boyfriend.” It’s a song where she is trying to convince a girl that she (Dove) would be a better boyfriend than the guy who is the girl’s current boyfriend. It’s super-cute, anthemic and just a great pop song. Now that Dove’s music has broken out in the mainstream in a huge way, she’s getting serious profiles and doing serious interviews. I thought she was in her early 20s, but she’s 26 years old, actually. She’s been working on Disney shows for a while. Some highlights from this LA Times interview:

Her image: “I’ve gone from the girl next door to the bad girl next door.”

Her decade with Disney: “I never had that moment where I was like, “I am a Disney girl.” I never looked at Miley or Demi or Selena or Zendaya or Bella or anybody — Hilary Duff or anybody that came before me — I never looked at them and thought, you and me — same. I was always the strange outlier who doesn’t belong and who will never fit in. I had huge impostor syndrome. I felt like I was wearing a rubber mask or something. So I don’t really look to anybody else for a roadmap. I mean, this whole narrative that I was on Disney and then found my way out with a pop song, it was a total f— accident.

Her isolated journey: “It’s an isolated journey. I think the Miley/Selena/Demi trifecta, they met because they were all there at the same time. I’m imagining they were all on the lot together. Also — and I cannot stress this enough — my life has always been personal stuff first and career stuff, like, fourth. More often than not my life is therapy, journaling, songwriting, poetry. I don’t really run into people very often.

Why her voice sounds raspier now than it did years ago: “I was very protective of my voice for a long time. I was born a coloratura [a type of operatic soprano], but it’s so hard to live that way. It’s monastic — you have to prioritize your voice above everything else. I remember meeting Kristin Chenoweth when I was 15 or 16, and I was like, “How do I do this?” and she said, “Here’s the litany of ways that I’m able to preserve my voice.” I thought, holy f—, there’s no way I can do that and still do everything else I want to do. And so my voice accrued damage. I spoke more, I sang more, I was working more — seven days a week, 18-hour days. And when you do that, your voice just gets raspier.”

“Boyfriend” as a queer anthem. “Every song of mine is a queer song because I’m a queer artist. Does that mean that every song is “I am G-A-Y”? No. I think there’s gonna be a lot of room in my artistry to talk about things other than that I love women. And “I eat boys like you for breakfast” does not translate into “I hate men and I only date women.” It means this one guy is a d— and I can take him in a fight. I’m a pansexual artist, so I’m attracted to and in love with who I’m attracted to and in love with.

How coming out affected her career: “I thought about that for a moment — not as an impetus or as a halt, but just like a brief meditation. I have no interest in living a life that isn’t entirely, energetically bold and truthful. And my sexuality is such a natural part of who I am and how I relate to the world that if I thought keeping it a secret would positively impact my career, I just wouldn’t be in this line of work.

What she thinks of homophobic legislation like Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill: “I think that’s a sort of death scream, as my mom likes to say — a death rattle, where a thing gets louder and more thrashy when its existence is threatened. I’m not saying that everything is great now. But I do think that if that type of thinking wasn’t under threat, we wouldn’t hear about it as much because it would be the dominant voice. We wouldn’t even notice it.

[From The LA Times]

I think the biggest difference between Dove’s journey and the other “Disney girls” is that she was given the space – and she actively took the space – to figure out who she is and develop her own thing in her own time. She’s part of the Disney machinery, for sure, but the Disney machinery has changed a lot in the past decade too, and it had to change because of Miley/Demi/Selena. Anyway, I like Dove. I like how confident and bold she is. I like that she knows herself.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.