Haim know a few things about just how cathartic it can be to call it quits. Their new album, I Quit, is steeped in tough breakups, but also the elation of hard-won independence. And while sisters Danielle, Alana, and Este Haim initially chose the title — a reference to a famous scene in That Thing You Do — as a placeholder, Alana tells Rolling Stone in a new interview, “After a while, we just realized it really did feel like the perfect title.”
“It honestly made us laugh,” Danielle adds.
Speaking over some homemade vodka cocktails, the Haim sisters dug into the creation of I Quit, the clever paparazzi-inspired marketing behind the album, and more. Alana even obliged to share the story of her wildest worst date — a saga that manages to incorporate those key themes of maintaining a strong sense of humor, and knowing when to cut and run.
“I was dating this comedian for like a month,” Alana says, acknowledging that while she was enjoying herself, she didn’t think the relationship would last. Those feelings briefly changed, however, on the first night she stayed over. As she and the guy walked to get coffee, the leaves falling around them, Alana says she began to reconsider the potential of this relationship — that is, until he “let out the craziest fart I have ever heard in my life.”
“It was so long, that I could have the thought, ‘When this fart is over, we’re gonna laugh about this! This is going to be our story!’” Alana remarks.
Now, there was nothing wrong with the fart in and of itself. “Obviously with this fart, he needed to let it out,” Alana says.
But the guy just continued as if nothing had happened. “It’s the fact that he didn’t acknowledge that was maybe the funniest fart that I’ve ever heard in my life,” she says. “I was like, ‘We are never gonna work. This is where I draw the line here.’ And he was a fucking comedian!”
Elsewhere in the interview, Haim spoke about sampling U2’s “Numb” after the Irish rockers borrowed the main riff from Haim’s own tune “My Song 5”; the paparazzi shots they didn’t get to recreate during the I Quit rollout; and the 10-year anniversary of their debut album, Days Are Gone. Haim also discussed their friendship with Stevie Nicks, who recently said she was working on a song with Haim.
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“There’s a lot of things to come that we’re very excited about,” Alana says of their work with Nicks, before noting the Fleetwood Mac singer also gifted them a shawl. “That is framed, no one is touching that shawl — that is a blessed shawl,” Alana quips.
“She’s always there for us, which is also such a crazy thing to say,” Este adds.
