Hayley Kiyoko - Girls Like Girls

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made. I'm Hrishikesh Hirway. Hayley Kiyoko is a singer, songwriter, author, and director from Los Angeles. She was a child actor on Disney and Nickelodeon, and briefly in a girl group called The Stunners, but then she started her career as a solo artist. In 2015, she put out the EP This Side of Paradise, and one of the songs on it was Girls Like Girls. She co-wrote it with Lily Mae Young and Owen Thomas, and it was produced by James Flanagan. Hayley co-directed the music video for it, and when the song and the video came out, it was an absolute phenomenon. It became a lesbian anthem. Rolling Stone named it one of the most inspiring LGBTQ songs of all time. Hayley's legion of fans gave her the nickname Lesbian Jesus. In 2023, Hayley adapted the song into a best-selling coming-of-age novel, and in June 2026, she made her feature film directorial debut with the movie adaptation of Girls Like Girls. So for this episode, Hayley and I talked about how it all started with the making of that song.

Saw your face, heard your name. Gotta get with you. Girls like girls like boys do. Nothing new. Girls like girls like boys do. Nothing new. I'm Hayley Kiyoko.

Do you feel like you've always been a performer? Is that just something that's been a part of you since the beginning?

So a fun fact is I wore a back brace in middle school for two years. I had really bad scoliosis, and I credit that experience and moment for the ability to fake my confidence, 'cause it was sink or swim. It was like, I'm wearing this back brace and I'm gonna get bullied, or I'm gonna have to pretend that this is the coolest thing you could do is, is fix your scoliosis. [laughs] And that's the direction I went. And so I kinda created this facade of confidence, but when I would come home, I felt very alone and very isolated, and I didn't feel like I had real connection. I knew I was queer since I was, like, five or six, and, you know, I have a specific memory of seeing NSYNC at the Staples Center, and I watched the boy band and I was like, "Oh my gosh, I wanna be on stage singing a song with screaming girls all over the place. Like, that is my dream." I wanted to be this pop star, and I was like, how does that work? I was like, okay, I love writing music on my acoustic guitar in my bedroom, and you know, I would write songs about girls all the time, but I would change the pronouns from she, her to he, him in my journals in case someone found them. So, like, even though I knew my truth, you're still even having to hide in your own space. So [sighs] I really struggled with, like, self-worth and self-love.

I feel like people might be surprised to learn that because weren't you on TV and already kind of a young star at that point?

Well, the first time I booked a role, I was 17, so I wasn't, like, a kid-kid, but I ended up starting to book commercials where I played a musician. Like, I was in, like, a Cinnamon Toast Crunch commercial, and I was, like, rocking out on the guitar, and I, like, would pretend to be a musician, but I really wanted to be a real musician. And I