Dove Cameron isn’t bothered “Boyfriend” is a popular song title — Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande both have songs of the same name — but her label was.
Speaking to Los Angeles Times, Dove said, “There was actually a point when my label was asking me to consider naming it ‘Gentleman.'”
“I really wanted to call it ‘Boyfriend’ because I’m very aware — painfully 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,” she continued. “Arriving at the person I am now, I’m relaxing into the freedom to poke fun at who people think I am.”
Dove noted, “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.”
The Descendants star also spoke about how much her singing voice has changed since her Disney days.
“I was born a coloratura [a type of operatic soprano], but it’s so hard to live that way … You have to prioritize your voice above everything else,” she explained. Of meeting Kristin Chenoweth and learning how the Broadway legend preserves her voice, Dove said, “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. Then I began to lean into that over the course of a few years in the recording studio,” she said, adding, “I do think that my voice developing in the way it did is a reflection of a lot of pain in my life.”
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