Joe Jonas Covers Hilary Duff’s Laguna Beach Theme Song “Come Clean” For An Important Cause

For early 2000s Disney Channel followers, this is what dreams are made of. On Aug. 29, Jonas Brothers member Joe Jonas honored his fellow Disney Channel alum Hilary Duff by covering her 2004 hit (and Laguna Beach theme song) “Come Clean” with his band DNCE on Instagram, giving Disney fans the ultimate nostalgic rush.

The band’s performance was as stripped down as can be, with Jonas turning his iPhone into a microphone and drummer Jack Lawless using jazz brushes and a tissue box as his drum kit. In fact, only guitarist JinJoo Lee had an actual instrument to play, strumming an acoustic guitar as Jonas belted out the iconic hit, using his falsetto to hit all of Duff’s high notes.

Jonas previously teased DNCE’s cover the day before posting it on Instagram, revealing that the true reason why they decided to perform “Come Clean” was to save Disney+’s now-scrapped Lizzie McGuire reboot. “We are DNCE and this is our formal campaign to get the Lizzie McGuire show back on air,” he wrote.

While Duff never responded to their Lizzie reboot attempt, she did approve Jonas’ spin on her song by reposting the band’s video to her Instagram Story and calling the cover “angelic” in the comments section, adding that her song “still slaps.”

Disney+ announced the return of Lizzie McGuire in August 2019, with Duff reprising her iconic character as a flourishing 30-year-old who has to move back in with her family after discovering her fiancé cheated on her. Production started later that year, but after shooting the first two episodes, filming was halted and showrunner Terri Minsky was ousted. In February 2020, Duff publicly pleaded for Disney to move the reboot to Hulu so they could show Lizzie as an authentic 30-year-old woman. However, the two parties were not able to come to an agreement, and Duff announced that the series wouldn’t move forward in December 2020.

In May, Duff told Women’s Health that she thinks Disney+ got “spooked” by the planned reboot’s mature content, but she stood by her decision to only reboot the show if it felt true to Lizzie’s nature. “She had to be 30 years old doing 30-year-old things,” the actor said. “She didn’t need to be doing bong rips and having one-night stands all the time, but it had to be authentic.” However, she’s open to the possibility of bringing back Lizzie on her terms, telling The Cut that the reboot was “not dead and not alive.” Perhaps Jonas’ light-hearted advocacy will be a step in the right direction.