When Haim launched “Hallelujah” in November 2019, the title alone invited confusion. This wasn’t a Leonard Cohen cowl. It wasn’t a hymn.
It was one thing quieter and extra private: a track in regards to the individuals who catch you when every part else falls away.
The observe arrived because the third single from what would turn into Ladies in Music Pt. III, following “Summer season Woman” and “Now I’m in It”.
The place these songs orbited round Danielle Haim’s experiences with nervousness and romantic turbulence, “Hallelujah” widened the lens.
This wasn’t about one particular person’s breaking level. It was about three sisters acknowledging the load every carries, and the aid of not carrying it alone.
Alana Haim wrote her verse after waking up on an October morning when she was 20 to study that her greatest buddy, Sammi Kane Kraft, had died in a automobile accident.
The loss rewired her understanding of permanence. She began desirous about all of the milestones Sammi wouldn’t see: turning 21 collectively in Vegas, travelling to festivals around the globe, standing beside her at a marriage.
The verse doesn’t dwell on the grief itself. It focuses on what stays after somebody is gone, and who you flip to when language fails.
Este’s verse got here from a distinct type of rupture. Recognized with Kind 1 diabetes at 14, she had spent years managing the situation with the type of self-discipline that makes it invisible to everybody else.
However across the time she wrote her a part of the track, she acquired tough information from her endocrinologist.
She’d been ignoring warning indicators, letting the fixed vigilance slip. She described the sensation as “diabetic burnout”, when the 24-hour duty of managing a persistent sickness turns into too exhausting to maintain.
Her verse doesn’t title the sickness. It speaks as a substitute to the fragility of attempting to carry every part collectively, and the necessity for individuals who perceive while not having to be informed.
Danielle opens the track with a line about assembly “two angels in disguise”. The reference factors towards her sisters, but it surely additionally units the tone for what the track is absolutely about.
This isn’t a love track within the conventional sense. It’s about recognising the individuals who keep shut when every part else turns into unstable.
The refrain repeats the identical query: “Why me? How’d I get this hallelujah?” The phrase doesn’t carry spiritual weight right here. It’s nearer to disbelief, or quiet astonishment at surviving one thing you weren’t certain you’ll.
The manufacturing displays that restraint. There are not any drums. Simply acoustic guitar, voices layered in concord, and area round each line.
Co-written with Tobias Jesso Jr. and produced by Ariel Rechtshaid, Rostam, and Danielle herself, the association refuses to dramatise the emotion. It lets the phrases sit plainly, with out embellishment.
Every sister takes a verse, and the construction makes the that means collective slightly than confessional.
When Danielle sings about outdated fears easing and new tears drying in time, she’s not providing reassurance to the listener.
She’s describing what it feels wish to lean on somebody who already is aware of the form of your worst days.
When Este sings about leaning her again in opposition to another person’s, or travelling like her toes don’t contact the ground, the imagery is bodily however not literal.
It’s in regards to the sensation of being held up when standing alone feels unimaginable.
Alana’s verse shifts the tense. “I had a greatest buddy however she has come to move,” she sings, earlier than addressing Sammi straight. “You all the time remind me that reminiscences will final.”
The verse doesn’t try closure. It holds the previous and current in the identical breath, acknowledging that grief doesn’t resolve however integrates.
The ultimate traces return to childhood imagery: lengthy hair, working by fields, the sensation of being protected. The simplicity makes it extra affecting, not much less.
The Paul Thomas Anderson-directed video mirrors that method. Shot on a single darkish stage, every sister takes her flip alone below a highlight earlier than they arrive collectively for the refrain.
There’s no narrative arc, no symbolic imagery. Simply three individuals passing one thing fragile between them.
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Listeners related to “Hallelujah” in ways in which shocked even the band. The track turned a reference level for individuals coping with persistent sickness, grief, or the slower, much less seen sorts of survival that don’t match neatly into public dialog.
It provided permission to really feel aid while not having a cause, to be thankful for small continuities slightly than grand resolutions.
What makes the track work is what it refuses to do. It doesn’t clarify. It doesn’t resolve. It doesn’t supply consolation within the type of solutions.
As a substitute, it acknowledges that among the most necessary relationships in our lives are those that ask the least of us, those that exist while not having to be named or defended.
The phrase “hallelujah” turns into a manner of marking that presence, not celebrating it.
Within the context of Haim’s catalogue, “Hallelujah” stands aside. It doesn’t attain for the propulsion of “The Wire” or the grit of “My Music 5”.
It doesn’t play with the textural density of their earlier work. It sits nonetheless, and in sitting nonetheless, it reveals one thing the louder songs couldn’t.
5 years after its launch, the track stays one of many band’s most quietly vital. Not as a result of it presents catharsis, however as a result of it doesn’t fake to. It merely holds area for the sensation of being held.
