The title “I Quit” implies resignation, but throughout the record, Haim eschew a former glossiness and recommit to their signature moody rock sound.
In a 2025 interview with GQ, Alana Haim, the youngest member of the sister indie-rock trio Haim, addressed the tendency of critics to assign a genre to the band. “Pop isn’t a bad word,” she said, displaying ambivalence. “But rock isn’t a bad word either.”
Since their 2013 debut, Days Are Gone, the sisters have flirted with both sounds. Opening for Taylor Swift‘s 1989 Tour in 2015, and again on the Eras Tour in 2023-24, further aligned the group with pop. However, their fourth album I Quit marks the clearest departure from the signifiers of that genre. For Haim, pop is the decoration of a rock enterprise. Resembling their upbringing in California’s San Fernando Valley, which was physically close to, but a world away from, Los Angeles, the siblings embrace the stardom of rock ‘n’ roll while keeping its sound fresh.
The title of Haim’s third album, 2021’s Women in Music Pt. III, suggested their work was overshadowed by their place in a male-dominated field. From that record, the track “Man from the Magazine” recounted a litany of demeaning questions the band received from journalists. I Quit builds on this spirit of resistance, analyzing the breakup of lead singer Danielle Haim and the group’s longtime producer, Ariel Rechtshaid. However, the songs prove Haim don’t need any collaborators, nor the buttress of a pop hook, to make compelling music.
“Down to Be Wrong” displays the band’s ability to deliver rock restlessness in a digestible form. Building to a crescendo of angst, Danielle liberates herself from a toxic relationship, saying, “I bet you think it’d be easy to change my mind / But it’s not this time,” as electric guitars and drums mesh in a cacophony of freedom. In the song’s music video, the sisters are specters haunting a man, played by actor Logan Lerman, who spends a sleepless night in a hotel, presumably in the aftermath of a breakup. When Lerman’s character checks out in the morning, the sisters let loose a celebratory guitar riff. When he takes a late-night walk through the hotel, Este Haim strums a guitar inches from his face, as if to taunt him.
Two other music videos from I Quit feature well-known male actors. “Relationships” stars Drew Starkey of Outer Banks, and “All Over Me” includes Will Poulter of We’re the Millers. Depicting themselves alongside male heartthrobs allows Haim to enter the world of pop without making pop music. By adorning their songs with cultural touchstones, they acknowledge their status as outsiders while turning that position into its own form of celebrity.
The opening track of I Quit, “Gone”, alludes to pop by sampling George Michael‘s “Freedom! ’90” as a backing vocal in the chorus. The subtle inclusion of an anthemic song captures Haim’s approach to music: utilizing their presence in the public sphere to make a point about the craft of musicianship. Later, in “The Farm”, the narrator recalls the division of possessions at the end of a relationship. “You can have the farm,” Danielle sings, “just buy me out.” At this conclusion, a harmonica and soft bass kick in, a soundtrack to a feeling of hard-earned peace.
The group’s previous record, Women in Music Pt. III, opened with the breezy track “Los Angeles”, a declaration of devotion to their hometown. The sisters admit, “New York… the greatest city in the world / But it was not my home.” Their mythology stems from roots in Southern California. In 2021, Alana Haim starred in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Oscar-nominated Licorice Pizza, a coming-of-age story set in the San Fernando Valley in the 1970s. Additionally, in interviews, the band bring journalists to their childhood haunts. “Walking around California’s San Fernando Valley with Haim is like touring Little Compton with Kendrick Lamar, or New Jersey with Bruce Springsteen,” wrote Ben Allen in GQ.
Growing up adjacent to the glamour of Hollywood, but without the connections afforded to “nepo babies”, Haim took a grassroots approach to fame. As children, they played in a recreational band with their parents called Rockinhaim. In “Take Me Back”, from I Quit, the sisters recall youthful memories with fondness: “Molly took a shit in the back of a truck / Didn’t even notice she was too coked up.” The song’s catchy melody conveys the wistfulness of looking back on the past, even as the present moves faster than ever.
Elsewhere, “All Over Me” is country in sentiment, a ballad of longing that escalates from acoustic strumming to rock mania. Although its message is uncomplicated, Haim use the narrator’s honesty to generate tension, as the song ascends to an uproar of guitars and drums. “Just trust me, we’ll meet in secrecy,” Danielle confides. With a lackadaisical melody, Haim avoids straightforward crowd-pleasing, but still creates a spectacle.
In 2023, when I attended Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, Haim were the opening act. In a flurry of black leather, they commanded the stage at Los Angeles’ Sofi Stadium, rotating between vocals, drums, and guitars, and anointing this concert their “hometown show”. Although averse to stardom, Haim carry cultural currency as representatives of the faction of music that remains ambivalent to celebrity but will compromise with it to tell a story.
Later in the show, they rejoined Swift onstage to perform their collaboration “no body, no crime”, from Swift’s 2020 album evermore. The song, a fictional tale of small-town murder, sees Swift’s narrator plot revenge on the man she believes killed her friend. Haim, in agreement, chant, “I think he did, but I just can’t prove it.” Although hyperbolic, perhaps “no body, no crime” is an allegory for the music industry, where all artists must fight for survival, but women are portrayed as ruthless for doing so in a way men are not.
In the music video for “Down to be Wrong”, when the sisters haunt a former lover, they resemble musical versions of Greek mythology’s three “Fates”, a trio of spirits who shape human events. By inhabiting this perspective, Haim turn their powers of observation into a form of action. Similarly, the title “I Quit” implies resignation, but throughout the record, the band eschew a former glossiness and recommit to their signature moody rock sound. I Quit may not include a clear hit, like “The Wire” from Days Are Gone, but Haim remain perfectly in tune with their strongest assets.
Haim’s ‘I Quit’ Is a Live Wire