C
an we get that on the record? That you can print, Music Week!” Este Haim is having her say on her band’s first Music Week cover feature, having just hit upon something the bassist/vocalist and her sisters, vocalist/guitarist/drummer Danielle and vocalist/guitarist/keyboardist Alana, want to say about their group. “Haim write their own songs, Haim produce their own songs and – shock – we play our songs!” Alana chimes in. “That shouldn’t be a headline, but if you would like to make that the headline of this article…” “Go for it!” exclaims Este, theatrically finishing her sister’s sentence. “And that…” Alana says, pausing for further dramatic effect, “…you can print!” We’re discussing the biggest challenges Haim have faced since forming in 2007 and, as they talk, it’s hard not to interpret their words as a giant middle finger to anyone who has ever cast doubt on their craft. “It sucks when people think that we don’t play our instruments,” says Alana, plainly. “That fucking sucks.”
Given that they’ve been playing music since they were kids growing up in the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles, not to mention that their recorded work is so unmistakably theirs, that argument doesn’t seem to carry much weight. Further facts are on offer, too. Haim became the first all-female rock band to be shortlisted for the Album Of The Year category at the Grammys for 2020’s Women In Music Pt. III, which debuted at No.1 in the UK, won them a BRIT for Best International Group and is soon to pass 100,000 sales, according to the Official Charts Company. So, too, is 2017’s Something To Tell You, while their No.1 2013 debut, Days Are Gone, has 376,701. Since their last record, other big-time moves include contributing to the Barbie soundtrack and Alana landing her first acting role, starring in the Oscar- and Golden Globe-nominated Licorice Pizza. On the stage, Haim headlined All Points East in London in 2023 and last year opened on Taylor Swift’s Eras juggernaut, as they did on her 1989 tour (their 2020 collaboration No Body, No Crime has 337,960 sales). They sold out The O2 on their last UK run, and are set to return later this year, as part of an arena tour. So, why on earth would anyone question them? “Your guess is as good as mine,” shrugs Alana. “We’ve been playing music since we were children. So when people try to decipher if we can actually play or not, I don’t know how much more we can do. We’re musicians, we take our live show so extremely seriously and we leave everything on the stage, because that’s where our happy place is: we’re a live band. So when someone says, ‘They’re not actually playing,’ I’m like, ‘Errr, come on the bus, guys, come be with us, and you can see us play…’” Ben Mortimer, president of Polydor Label Group, has more experience than most of what Haim can do. In fact, they were the first act he signed for the major, which can now proudly point to a UK-driven global success story for a huge US act. “Haim were the first act I signed when I came to Polydor in
2012,” he smiles. “To still be working with them 13 years later is something I’m very proud of. They’re a formidable live band – I’m not sure that’s something that’s celebrated enough about them.” Haim are friendly – overwhelmingly so – but you get the idea that they might quite like the idea of squashing their naysayers to a pulp. Welcome, then, to Haim’s ‘fuck you’ era.
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I’m Gone, the thunderous opener on I Quit, their fourth album (due via Polydor on June 20), sees Danielle imparting swaggering lines such as, ‘I’ll do whatever I want’ and, ‘You can’t make me disappear’. It’s no surprise when she says that making I Quit was all about embracing freedom. “It felt like, ‘I’m doing me and I’m just not gonna let other people dictate how I live my life,’” she explains. Mortimer praises the album’s “rockier”
feel and promises that the band “went really deep on the process – expect good surprises”. Alongside the likes of Lana Del Rey and
Olivia Dean on Polydor Label Group’s 2025 release slate, Haim are a big part of the reason Mortimer is “buzzing” about the future. “We are having a truly phenomenal 2025,” he says. “We’ve had the biggest global dance record of the year with Chrystal’s The Days. We’ve released a record-breaker of an album with Sam Fender’s People Watching, and a career best with Inhaler’s Open Wide. Internationally, Doechii has been a huge breakthrough, plus Sabrina Carpenter and Gracie Abrams continue to dominate.” Haim, who recently joined Carpenter on the books at Volara Management, are equally optimistic about I Quit. Alana says that if Women In Music Pt. III nudged the door ajar for them getting towards how they’ve always wanted to sound, its hard-rocking follow-up sees it “fly wide open”. While cooking up ideas for the 15 songs on the record – which she co-produced with Rostam Batmanglij, who worked on Something To Tell You and Women In Music Pt. III – Danielle came across a photograph of the actor Katherine Hepburn, beaming while standing next to a sign outside her house that read: ‘Please Go Away’. “She just looks so happy in her garden and I was so inspired by that,” she says. “Danielle showed us and we thought it was so funny,”
Sister act: (Top to bottom) Haim on stage with Taylor Swift last year, playing The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon with Rostam Batmanglij in 2020 and celebrating at the BRITs in 2021
“Haim were the first act I signed at Polydor, they have always been a formidable
LABEL GROUP
MORTIMER, POLYDOR
band!” BEN
says Alana. “When things make us laugh, we really pay attention.” “It’s not easy to make us laugh,” adds Este.
Haim’s interpretation of that image adorns the cover of I Quit – it was shot in a dry cleaners near where they grew up by previous collaborator and Licorice Pizza director Paul Thomas Anderson. Este drove around for hours looking for a suitable place. “I can be very persuasive,” she notes. “We shot some things
during opening hours, but we knew it would go into after hours, too, and they let us have the run of the place.”
For Este, the endeavour says a lot about where Haim come from. “We rep the San Fernando Valley really hard, and I think a lot of
that comes from the fact that people are just really kind and nice and want to help out,” she says. “And this one guy, who was not getting paid [overtime], was just like, ‘I’ll stay.’” “It was very sweet,” says Alana. “We went in there and we didn’t tell anybody. We definitely didn’t tell our label or anything like that. We don’t like telling people what we’re doing.” On the artwork, the band wear sparkly vintage dresses scooped up from a nearby thrift store, Danielle holding a neon LED sign illuminated with the words ‘I Quit’.
As for the title itself, it comes from a line in That Thing You Do!, Tom Hanks’ 1996 directorial debut. The Haim sisters have been obsessed with it since it came out.
“It’s about this band that writes a song and it immediately goes to No.1,” says Alana. “It’s the dream scenario that doesn’t happen in real life, but that’s what we thought the music industry was.”
Music Week | 31
PHOTOS: Andrew Lipovsky/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank, JMEnternational/JMEnternational For BRIT Awards, Kevin Winter/TAS23 Getty
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