In celebration of Pride Month and Global Pride Day, Hayley Kiyoko joined Billboard Live At-Home to perform some of her biggest hits for her fans at home. “I love June and I love that we have a Pride month,” Kiyoko said. “I really encourage you all to practice your pride on a daily basis, and the more you do that the more you’ll believe it.”
Before jumping into her set, Kiyoko encouraged fans to donate to The Bail Project. “While we are celebrating the LGBTQ+ community it’s so important to show our support in the fight for racial justice,” Kiyoko said.
The singer, songwriter and LGBTQ+ icon kicked off her performance with a fresh rendition of “What I Need,” a breakout track from her debut studio album, Expectations, originally featuring Kehlani. “That was a vibe,” Kiyoko exclaimed after the performance. “The energy performing that song live is so much fun.”
After completing her first song solo, 3 of Kiyoko’s bandmates joined her for “Runaway” and “Let It Be.” “Runaway” is a powerful track Kiyoko wrote to encourage her fans to seek out healthy relationships and to move away from toxicity in their lives. Released in late 2019, Kiyoko revealed during the livestream that this is her favorite song from her 2020 project I’m Too Sensitive For This Shit. “This was so fun to perform live,” Kiyoko told her fans. “What’s great about music is you write a song and you envision what it’s going to end up as, and when you perform it live it can take so many different forms and can create new life for these songs that you wrote months ago.”
Kiyoko closed the live performance with “Let It Be,” another throwback to Expectations and a fan favorite. One of the slower paced tracks from the album, the song shows off Kiyoko’s vocals and highly relatable lyrics. The singer ended the livestream by responding to fan questions and comments, many of which asked her about her experiences during quarantine and looking for advice about pride, love and life.
“Pride to me means survival, protest, self-love,” Kiyoko said. “It’s a personal experience for all of us. It’s something that individually we work really hard to achieve. You have to put energy and practice into your own pride, and your own self-love.”
