Best Coast Rerecord “Boyfriend” With More Inclusive Pronouns For Charity

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Best Coast Rerecord “Boyfriend” With More Inclusive Pronouns For Charity

Best Coast’s debut album Crazy For You just turned 10. And to celebrate, the band is releasing a new version of its classic opener “Boyfriend,” one of the best songs of the past decade. They rerecorded the track with new pronouns to make it more inclusive, and all proceeds will go to the Trevor Project. In a statement, Bethany Cosentino explains:

When I was 22 years old I wrote a song about a guy I was quite literally, obsessed with, called “Boyfriend.” This obsession took up a lot of my time and mental energy. In the decade since writing this song, I have had a lot of time to reflect on not only that obsession, 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 around the time I really started working on myself at age 30. 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.

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. That is one of the most special parts of art – what the artist creates can be interpreted in so many different ways by the people who experience it – and the experience of this song through the eyes of the LGBTQ+ community of Best Coast fans, is truly the way I want it to be experienced.

With all that being said, here is a new, reimagined version of “Boyfriend” that includes everyone. For today only, this version will be available to stream or buy on our Bandcamp, with all proceeds going to The Trevor Project, an organization that focuses on suicide prevention efforts among lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning youth. The core of Best Coast songs have always been about struggling with your identity while trying to keep your head above water, so I deeply care about any organization that focuses on mental health awareness.

Thank you so much to the people who have messaged me or told me their stories in person over the years — you are what inspired the new version of this song and I hope you enjoy it.

The new “Boyfriend” will only be available today as part of the latest Bandcamp Friday; listen to it below.

On 8/14, Best Coast are performing Crazy For You in its entirety with special guests including Paramore’s Hayley Williams, Blink-182’s Mark Hoppus, and CHVRCHES’ Lauren Mayberry. Tickets for that are available here.

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