South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Actor morphs into ‘bad girl next door’
“I’ve gone from the girl next door to the bad girl next door.”
With a laugh, that’s how Dove Cameron describes the journey she has been on with “Boyfriend,” the sly, smoky electro-pop single that’s made her one of 2022’s breakout music acts after nearly a decade of acting work in the Disney Channel trenches. In the song, the 26-yearold enumerates some of the many ways she could improve upon a woman’s boyfriend.
“Boyfriend” presents a darker vision than Disney’s smiley “Liv and Maddie” series, in which Cameron played a pair of identical twins, and its “Descendants” series, in which Cameron’s the daughter of Maleficent. So too does “Breakfast,” Cameron’s follow-up single about how she could eat a guy like you for — well, you get it. And part of that is growing up, of course. Yet Cameron says that, even at its most playful, her music also bears the weight of an inordinately traumatic upbringing that included the killing of her best friend by the friend’s father (when Cameron was 8) and her own father’s death by suicide (she was 15).
This interview with Cameron has been edited for clarity and length.
Q: Before your “Boyfriend,” Justin Bieber released a song with the same title. So did Ariana Grande. And Selena Gomez. And Ashlee Simpson. A:
There was actually a point when my label was asking me to consider naming it “Gentleman” because there were so many other songs called “Boyfriend.” But I really wanted to call it “Boyfriend” because I’m very aware … of the sort of concoction of who I
am in the public eye. And that (concoction) is such a far cry from who I am. People are like, “But you were blond, and you were dating men, and you were on the Disney Channel.” Yes, but there were always so many more dimensions. It’s just that the space I was in would never have allowed me to express those dimensions. Arriving at the person I am now, I’m relaxing into the freedom to poke fun at who people think I am.
Q: Your “Boyfriend” is toying with the gendered connotations of such a familiar word. A:
But it’s not like, “I tricked you, and now here I am!” It’s almost like I’m roasting myself in so much of the stuff I create. “Boyfriend” being such a misleading title helps me acknowledge where I was and who I am now. I love to highlight the discrepancies between the two.
Q: Fans have framed “Boyfriend”
as a queer anthem. How does “Breakfast” embody your queerness? A: 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.” … I’m a pansexual artist, so I’m attracted to and in love with who I’m attracted to and in love with.
July 10 birthdays: Singer Mavis Staples is 83. Actor Mills Watson is 82. Actor Robert Pine is 81. Singer Arlo Guthrie is 75. Actor Fiona Shaw is 64. Singer Gary LeVox is 52. Actor Sofia Vergara is 50. Actor Adrian Grenier is 46. Actor Chiwetel Ejiofor is 45. Actor Gwendoline Yeo is 45. Singer Jessica Simpson is 42. Actor Heather Hemmens is 34.