Haim Knows Where the Future of Rock Is Going

Good things tend to come to those who wait, and in the case of Haim’s most recent lead single, “Relationships,” they became exclusive and helped secure a nomination for Best Rock Album at the Grammys. The song, released in March to roll out their fourth album, I Quit, with some amusing pop-culture homages in tow, was initially written nearly a decade ago in the hopes of making the track list for 2017’s Something to Tell You. The sister trio just couldn’t find the right chemistry, no matter how many dates — and how many tempo changes — they took it on.

“We did it a million different ways,” guitarist Alana Haim recalls. “We worked on the song once a year for all of those years. When we figured out what the drum pattern should be, it was like the whole song got unlocked. And now I’m here thinking, ‘Relationships’ was never supposed to be on that album. It would’ve never fit. We weren’t ready for it.” It didn’t hurt, either, that the sisters were all single at the same time while recording I Quit, the first time this alignment occurred in their adult lives. “I’m so grateful for those roadblocks,” Danielle Haim, the group’s drummer and lead vocalist, adds. “We were going out, coming back to the studio, and having the best time recounting these crazy dates we were going on.”

Luckily for us, the trio, which also consists of bassist Este Haim, didn’t take their album title too literally. Following a lengthy 2025 tour to remind everyone how fantastic they are live — and with a bobbed Alana taking a detour to appear in One Battle After Another, directed by the man they lovingly call “the fourth Haim sister” — the band has no plans to stop doing the one thing they love above all else. “The greatest present in life is that I get to be in a rock band with my siblings,” Alana says. “Our mantra has never changed: We put out albums to play live so we can go see all of our fans and party with them. If we can keep doing that, I’m a happy gal.”

Here, the sisters unpack the evolution of their career through the stories of their four lead singles.

The Song

Danielle Haim: We had been playing in Los Angeles for five years at that point, at any and every venue that we could somehow get on the lineup. We were all feeling, Why don’t we try writing songs? We didn’t know how to home-record anything. Once a year, we would save up all of our money and go into some studio in the Valley that was kind of going out of business and record something, but we didn’t know what the hell we were doing. Finally, one day, we were playing in the lobby of the Roosevelt Hotel and Ludwig Göransson was there for a party. He came up to us after and was like, “You guys are great. I have a studio. Do you want to record there?” We didn’t know anyone with an actual studio. He was scoring Community and New Girl and he was just out of college. He’s this cute Swedish guy.

Alana Haim: We were like, You have a studio? Holy shit. We had tried to record songs, because to play live at venues, their bookers would look at your MySpace and listen to your music. But we could never get a good recording, so we could never get shows. So we were always like, We have to have one song so we can get paid gigs.

D.H.: The first thing we tried to record with Ludwig was “Forever.” He didn’t have a drum set. We had our own gear, but it wasn’t that great. The one thing I did have was this old Gretsch drum kit. I was like, “I want live drums.” There was a live room for orchestras in this space set up for composers, and Ludwig was like, “I can squeeze the drums into the studio.” It was so quick that I don’t even think I had headphones. It sounded totally fine, but I was like, “Why don’t we just try to fuck it up more?” Because it was done so quickly, everything sounds a bit distorted and live. It sounds crazy. Then we built the track from there. I’ll never forget finishing that song and thinking, This is what we’ve been trying to sound like.

Este Haim: The song was half-time when we first wrote it.

D.H.: We decided we wanted it to be more of a dance song. It was a lot slower. We were really into Kate Bush at the time and Hounds of Love. It was more of a serious, emo song in the style of hers. Then we were like, No, we want it to be double time and dance to it.

A.H.: I’ll never forget when we finished “Forever.” It was the first time I was so excited to play a song for my friends. We were never “pass the aux cord” people. But when “Forever” was finished, I was like, Oh my God, we can finally show people a song we’re proud of.

The Bet

A.H.: We put it for free on our website and it started this crazy journey for us. We put it up with no intention other than getting a headlining slot at the Echo. We had never headlined a show before.

E.H.: There was never even an album in our minds. We weren’t signed yet. This was just so we could play live.

The Payoff

A.H.: Everything happened so quickly next. It took us years to get to that spot, but the second we put out “Forever,” it exploded in the U.K. and we were off to the races. What we learned from that experience is that we need patience. It took us months to finish the song because we wanted to perfect it and we had a collaborator who was also a perfectionist. We finally cracked the code on our process. It’s like, Oh, we need time.

D.H.: Electronic music was starting to become the biggest thing ever. Everyone was like, “You’re a girl band. No one has liked a band in four years.” It was post–Vampire Weekend and MGMT. There weren’t a lot of other bands that were coming out around that time. It was a lot of “bedroom musicians” — people making music on their computer and not performing much. That’s not what we were doing. So once we got on the stage, people were like, “Who are these girls?” That really helped us.

A.H.: A lot of people wanted to put us in a box of, “What genre do you belong in?” Growing up, we had so many different influences, so when “Forever” came out, it didn’t seem weird to mix genres. That’s just what was coming out of our brains and how we wanted to sound. People were like, “Where do you live? Where are you from?” And we’re like, “We live in Haimland.”

E.H.: As a landscape, the U.K. got us from the jump. Over there, you don’t need to just be one thing. America is very genre-heavy. I remember playing a show literally every single day trying to promote this song. We were playing in front of hundreds, and then thousands, of people all of a sudden after playing to five people in Los Angeles and giving our friends drink tickets to entice them to come support us.

D.H.: “Forever” was our calling card, and it gave us the ability to see the world. From 2012 to the end of 2014, we played every festival and every venue that would have us. It was the most magical time. Everything was new. It was our dream to see the world together.

The Song

A.H.: I’m taking credit for “Want You Back.” I’m just going to say it. It’s similar to what happened with “Forever,” where it started as a slower and more melancholic song. There’s always a fucking problem child on every record. “The Wire” was the problem child for Days Are Gone. “Want You Back” was definitely our problem child for Something to Tell You. We knew the song was good, but we just couldn’t figure it out. For a really long time, we didn’t work on it. I remember putting my foot down and being like, “You guys, we got to fucking work on this song. This song has something to it.” And lo and behold, you speed it up and put in some fun synths. That first synthesizer sound opened it up to, “Okay, now we’re cooking.” When we finished that song, I was like, “There you go, baby sister did it again.”

E.H.: We had just come home, really. We just kept going around and around and around and around in circles in Europe.

A.H.: It was the first time all of us had to look back and reconcile with, Oh, this is our life now. Having these relationships and trying to find somebody, you think, I’m going to grow up and have my dream job of touring the world. The guy I’m with is going to be so happy with me that I’m going away for 17 months and I’ll see him when I get back with a handkerchief at the train station. No, that’s not the case. Dating in your early 20s is hard enough and then add being away from home for months and months. What we were thinking about when we were writing that song is trying to be like, “I’m sending you a message. I’m trying my best to balance this beautiful dream of a life I have while also balancing love.” We’re still trying to figure it out. We love mixing these melancholy lyrics with a fun dance beat. So with “Want You Back,” we wanted you to cry on the dance floor.

The Bet

A.H.: I think our lead singles choose us. It’s like, What song opens up an album that lets you into this new world? I don’t want to be so woo-woo about it, but it really does feel that way. All of our lead singles on all of our albums, they raised their hands to us.

D.H.: Yeah, it’s a weird feeling. That synthesizer sound in “Want You Back” raised its hand and wanted to open a new world for that album. Our whole career is listening to our gut.

A.H.: We also saw the potential for this as a music video. Our dream growing up was to shut down Ventura Boulevard. It’s no secret that we love the Valley in Los Angeles. We’re Valley girls. Originally for the video, we were going to drive down Ventura Boulevard and do doughnuts on it. It’s harder than it looks. We ended up crashing the car before the music video even started. Then we had to leave and go on tour, and when we returned, the Valley let us shut down Ventura Boulevard one more time. We were like, “Okay, so what’s safer than cars? Walking?” So we walked down Ventura Boulevard. It started the Something to Tell You era with a literal bang.

The Payoff

A.H.: It was the same mantra we did when we put out Days Are Gone. We didn’t put any expectations or pressure on us, we just wanted to go back on the road again. It was an addictive feeling to tour.

D.H.: I think home life scared us more than tour life at that point.

A.H.: Get ready until we get to the next album, because that’s when everything crashes. But for Something to Tell You, it was like, Fuck yeah, we get to put out this album and then go right back to where home was on the tour bus. We wanted to get away. Truly, that was it. And that behavior led to Women in Music Pt. III, where we fully fucking crashed out.

The Song

D.H.: Wait, Alana, why do you think we crashed out?

A.H.: A lot of things had happened in those beginning years. We were running away from a lot of the problems that were waiting for us at home. You don’t realize how taxing touring can be on your physical body and mental self. When it came to Women in Music Pt. III, we had two insane world tours under our belts. We had hoped that all the problems we had left behind would’ve just gone away. That was the first time we really felt a post-tour crash.

D.H.: Yeah, that’s true.

A.H.: We were going a hundred miles an hour and then it went to zero overnight. Then you’re alone in your house and you’re like, now I have to look at myself in the mirror and go, “What’s going on with you? What’s happening in your brain?” We were so insanely exhausted that all we could be was vulnerable. We wanted to lay bare our souls and vomit it all out. Danielle had started the song very early on in the album process. We were figuring out what was going on, and halfway through making “Summer Girl,” we called in the incredible Paul Thomas Anderson. He was coming into the studio whenever he wanted to and listening to our stuff. We showed him the bare bones of “Summer Girl.”

E.H.: It wasn’t even summer yet, it was in the middle of May. We all collectively love Lou Reed, so we interpolated “Walk on the Wild Side.” We liked the idea of playing two basses at the same time. Danielle had a really great electronic bass on GarageBand. And when we got in the studio, I got out a double bass. I hadn’t played stand-up bass since college. I was in a bluegrass band in college called the Bluegrass Hoppers, but it turns out I can still do that slide loop pretty well. We had two basses playing at the same time, which was a dream for me.

A.H.: We just kept singing, “I’m your summer girl.” Paul was like, “I’m obsessed with this song and can’t get it out of my head.” So we were on the right track. Then he asked, “When are you going to put it out?” There wasn’t a plan to put it out yet. Our album wasn’t close to being done. We didn’t even have a bridge for the song. So he went, “Oh, no, you’re going to put this out right now. It’s nearly summer and we’re going to shoot the music video in two days.”

The Bet

D.H.: We finished the song in two days, shot the video three days later, and then put it out in July. It was just like, All right, well, it’s almost summer at this point, so fuck it. It was liberating to be like, You know what? We can just put this shit out very soon without a timeline. Our album didn’t end up coming out for almost a year later.

The Payoff

A.H.: We call “Summer Girl” our angel song. Because we started to feel like, Are we on the right track? Is this record even going to be good? Paul really pushed us over the edge and encouraged us to release it. It whipped us into shape. The album wasn’t anywhere near done, but we had this one song. Looking back, that was the whole ethos of the album. We were just making songs and putting them out, and it felt like this fresh new take. Women in Music Pt. III had a free feeling to it, which is what we needed. I mean, in the “Summer Girl” music video, I’m fucking blonde. I have a blonde bob. What happens when you go from having long brown hair to a blonde bob? You’re crashing out, babe. Our label didn’t even know that we had anything yet. We had to fly to the U.K. to tell our label, “Surprise! Guess what we have for you!”

The Song

D.H.: Wow, “Relationships” was also a slower and more melancholic song to start. It seems like a Haim thing. I never made that connection before. All of our lead singles really do share that.

A.H.: I’m learning so much from this conversation, it’s like therapy. We always knew it was special, but every time we attempted to produce it, we never got it together. It never sounded correct in our ears. It wasn’t supposed to be this sad melody. We even tried so hard to get it on Women in Music Pt. III. Sorry again to the readers for making me seem like I’m a big woo-woo-universe person, but there really were these roadblocks for “Relationships.” I feel like I need to go to a psychic after this.

E.H.: Probably 90 percent of my day is thinking about relationships. I’m a little bit of an overthinker, even though I know I Quit was supposed to be about how to stop thinking. I just live in a perpetual spiral of, Where do I stand with people? So you just live in it. I think I’m also going to unpack this with my therapist. I’m always thinking about where I stand with people and what my relationship is with people. That’s probably not healthy.

The Bet

A.H.: It was always supposed to be our first song on I Quit. It was our first album where all three of us were single and we were all feeling extremely hot and sexy. It was this new era of being free in our bodies. I was like, Oh, this shit’s fucking hard, but now I’m single and ready to make out.

The Payoff

D.H.: I felt like our fans were going to “get” the song and know who we are. There are people who aren’t necessarily clued into our music and don’t understand that some songs are more rock and some songs are more pop. With our band, for some reason, people just can’t place us. Maybe that’s why we were never in the rock category for the Grammys until now, even though we’re very much a rock band.

E.H.: The state of rock music is that people want to experience it. That’s the future of rock: people going out, seeing shows, and wanting to feel what it’s like to see a live band. I just want to keep touring. I love being out on the road and playing my instrument live. There’s not a feeling that’s close to it, at least for me. Right now, my bass is sitting in the corner of my room. I look at it every night before I go to bed, like a psycho. Talk about a relationship — the longest relationship I’ve had has been with my bass. That’s kind of weird to say, but it’s the thing that I can always go back to. It’s always there for me. It’s the steadiest thing I have in my life, along with my sisters.