Interview: The Meaning Behind Dove Cameron’s Sultry Hit “Boyfriend”

Dove Cameron‘s biggest career hit came out of one of the most traumatic nights of her life. The 27-year-old singer and actress, known for her starring roles in Liv and Maddie and the Descendants, says that she’ll likely take the story of the night’s events to her grave. But fans can get some of the details in the lyrics of her breakout hit “Boyfriend.” Penned by Cameron, Delacey, Skyler Stonestreet, and Evan Blair, “Boyfriend” was released in 2022 as the lead single of Cameron’s debut album, Alchemical: Volume 1.

The song casts Cameron as a seductress who encounters a woman at a party where flames quickly spark. The universe must have divined this / What am I gonna do? / Not grab your wrist? / I could be a better boyfriend than him / I could do the shit that he never did / Up all night, I won’t quit, she sings with ethereal vocals. After Cameron came out as queer in 2021, “Boyfriend” has become an LGBTQ anthem around the world, shooting to the Top 10 on pop radio and No. 16 on the Billboard Hot 100. Below, Cameron talks to American Songwriter about the origins of the song and how it changed her life.

[RELATED: Digital Cover Story: Dove Cameron on Acting and Writing Her Latest Album, ‘Alchemical: Volume 1’—“There’s Something Really Human About Songwriting”]

The Meaning Behind the Song “Boyfriend”

“It was the very first song that I sat down to write on what I thought was going to be my album journey and then ‘Boyfriend’ kind of grabbed me by the neck and dragged me behind the party bus for eight months of my life. It really threw off my writing schedule because suddenly there was this song that was just grabbing me by the hair and leading me all over the planet to promote it. When you have a hit like that, it takes over your life, and unless you have all of this music behind it already, this song becomes your world. Because it was the very first song I sat down to write, I didn’t get back into the studio until months and months after ‘Boyfriend’ came out.

I wrote that song based on a very emotional evening, funny enough. I was able to turn it around and make it an empowering conclusion that I came to rather than what actually happened, which I think is so interesting. I remember the end of that night, which I think I’ll go to my grave without ever embellishing upon, I was calling multiple best friends and crying in a car, stayed up all night writing, sobbing about this thing that had just happened. That was still one of the wildest nights of my life. I remember finally falling asleep as the sun was coming up being like, ‘The unlikelihood of this night was so wild.’ I really mean this, and I have the life experience to back it up – this night was so traumatizing that I was like, ‘There has to be a fu***** purpose as to why all of these different things would align in this way to be so fu**** up.’

Then when I wrote the song and it took off, I remember being like, ‘Thank God that night happened because it changed my life, and if it hadn’t happened, I never would have the music career that I do now.’ It’s so wild when you can look back to these turning points in your life and it’s really encouraging as well. It allowed me to step into the fullness of who I am and my identity and my sexuality in a way that I might have never….I did not know it was going to be a hit. It was a really crazy, lightning-in-a-bottle, life-changing thing, that song. I’m forever grateful.”

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