Trevor Flores
It’s been eight years since Hayley Kiyoko’s breakthrough hit “Girls Like Girls” became a modern queer anthem, bolstered by bluntly sung lyrics (“Girls like girls like boys do/Nothing new”) and a touching music video that the singer directed herself. Since then, she’s steadily risen through the pop ranks with two studio albums, a slew of glossy synth-pop singles, and more cinematic, self-directed videos that have only gotten more ambitious in scale. But the impact of “Girls Like Girls” hasn’t diminished a bit, thanks to its intimate, authentic portrayal of a teen friendship-turned-romance: a story so resonant that Kiyoko’s fans responded by lovingly dubbing her “Lesbian Jesus.”
Now, the 32-year-old has expanded her five-minute “Girls Like Girls” video from 2015 into a young adult novel of the same name. For Kiyoko, it presented the opportunity to take the two central characters from the video, Coley and Sonya, and flesh their stories out in a way that mirrors her own life as a once-closeted teen.
“The music video stemmed from this experience I had in high school where I fell in love with my best friend and it didn’t work out,” Kiyoko recently told The Daily Beast over Zoom. “And then as far as writing the novel was concerned, I basically took Coley’s character and had Coley live through everything that I went through as far as my self-discovery, navigating my self-worth, navigating loving myself, and also falling in love with someone.”