The evolution of Haim’s sound also helped them grasp songs that had slipped through their fingers over the last decade.
I Quit’s first single Relationships is a glossy pop earworm that first came to Danielle on a flight home from Haim’s 2017 Australian tour.
In the intervening years, it went through “hundreds” of re-writes, changing lyrics and tempos, before finally “coming to life” at Batmanglij’s home studio.
By contrast, Take Me Back was made up on the spot, as the band shared raucous stories from their high school days – of boys who couldn’t perform in bed and friends who lost control of their bowels “in the back of a truck”.
“That one fell into place so quickly,” says Alana. “We didn’t even know if it was going to go on the album.
“It was just us riffing from the heart and being like, ‘This is the kind of song that we want to make today’, with no pressure. We were laughing through the whole experience.
“At the end of it, we were like, ‘This is hilarious, we’ve got to put it on the album’.”
That candour inspired the album’s promotional campaign, where the sisters shared some of their dating horror stories.
One man broke up with Este when she told him their future children might have Type 1 Diabetes. He was like, ‘Then why are we here?'” she recalls.
Alana shared the story of travelling to London to spend New Year’s Eve with a musician she thought she was dating, only for him to high five her at midnight.
On tour, fans shared their own disaster stories on Haim’s video screens.
Among them was a girl in Philadelphia who discovered her boyfriend’s private safe contained neither money nor passports, but a shrine to his ex… And his mum.
“When you’re going through these heartbreaks, you just feel like there’s no light,” says Alana.
‘So to be able to laugh at those stories and share them with other people, and then have them tell you even crazier stories, it’s so amazing.
“We can laugh at all these things, and it’s not going to keep us from trying to find love in the future.”
