2020 was a monumental year for Best Coast. The Bethany Cosentino-led project released their latest album, Always Tomorrow, and also celebrated the 10th anniversary of the band’s breakout debut Crazy For You. To celebrate both that album and Pride, they recently recorded a new version of their single “Boyfriend” with lyrics that include different pronouns to make the song more inclusive to LGBTQ+ listeners.
The song was originally released benefiting the Trevor Project, a nonprofit supporting LGBTQ+ youth. This year in celebration of Pride, the band will be releasing the track to all DSPs for the first time.
Says Bethany regarding the song: “In the decade since writing this song, I have had a lot of time to reflect on not only that obsession [alluded to in ‘Boyfriend’], but the way in which I have at times, glorified obsessive and toxic romantic relationships in my songwriting. This song in particular started to feel problematic to me. I would listen back to my lyrics and think about how much I was neglecting myself and how I made this guy the protagonist of my own life and story.”
To more accurately reflect her developing philosophies, Cosentino and Best Coast band member Bobb Bruno re-recorded the song. “Somewhere down the line, I started noticing that this song, in particular, seemed to be a bit of an anthem for the LGBTQ+ community. I would get tagged in social media posts of guys proposing to their boyfriends with the song in the background, I would get countless messages from Queer fans about how they put this song on a playlist for their crush and then their crush became their partner, I met lesbian and gay couples at shows who told me they had their first kiss to this song. Suddenly I realized that it had a whole new meaning than the one it did when I first wrote it.”
