“I quit” by Haim
This can’t just be the way it is
There are a lot of ways to say you broke up with someone. But “I quit”…… that says a lot.
I quit is a break-up album. But the relationship was more power-struggle than intimacy. On the first track, our girl breaks-up with her boyfriend, “Now I’m gone, now I’m free.” By track two, she’s onto rebound guy, “when I want you, I want you all over me“. Track three, she’s back on the fence about her ex(?)-boyfriend, “I can’t decide if we’re through.”
She goes back and forth a lot. But that’s the thing…she comes back and she leaves again. She doesn’t say, “I wonder if we’re through.” It’s “I can’t decide if we’re through.” She decides.
Haim’s album captures a new type of relationship. A 30-something millennial woman, unmarried, has her own money, can have a boyfriend or not. These women have no problem dividing up the parts that traditionally make a marriage—love, companionship, sex—and taking only the parts they want. Then leaving: “I'm getting you hard in the back of the car, but baby, you know that I'll still be leaving tomorrow.”
How does a girl like this get sucked into a rats-nest of a relationship?
You Really Fucked with My Confidence
If she decides whether the relationship continues or not…what control does the boyfriend have?
We hear echoes of him through her voice: “I’m out of your way,” “I don’t have to pay the debt,” and I’m “down to be wrong.” This implies he calls her a nuisance (in his way), he justifies mistreatment with “you owe me,” and he won’t admit he’s wrong.
He decides the reality of the relationship. Who is good and who is bad. And unfortunately, he calls her bad: “You speak like I’m the one who was out of line for what I’ve done.”
A quote from the song “Relationships”
This kind of dynamic is very sticky. To leave, she has to accept the role of villain.
In the simplest terms, she will stay to prove she was good, “you know I’m trying to change.” But he will never give her credit, “after all the times I tried, just to always come back denied.”
Why does he keep rejecting her if he wants her to stay?
She sings, “I would take off the chain, but you wouldn’t stop the rain.” He’ll never stop criticizing her because he wants that chain—her attention. Criticism keeps her attention. Finally, she gets the picture: “I will never love you right.” It’s not about him being satisfied. He never will be. It’s about keeping her hooked.
But awareness doesn’t make it easy. Walking away—and accepting that she’ll be the bad guy in his story—is a tough pill to swallow: “I crushed up these pills and I still couldn't take them.”
This break-up turns into a fight for her identity. Women like this are stubborn and driven. They overcome challenges. They are not accustomed to backing down.
That is…to quitting.
Cover art for the single “Down to be wrong.” Haim recreated paparazzi photos for the cover art for singles off this album.
Try to Feel My Pain
Somewhere, underneath all this, is love.
So many feelings on this album are concrete. Strength (Gone), anger (Blood on the street), serendipity (Lucky stars), nostalgia (Take me back).
But love goes nearly unmentioned. Maybe she views love as a weakness because it makes her vulnerable. And she wants to be strong at all times: “I’ll hide away my pain.”
When we don’t admit something exists, it usually becomes the driver of our behavior: “I’m spinning around, why am I acting so strange?” So in this case, I would argue that her strength is actually her weakness. Nobody can be strong all the time.
But our girl is as smart as she is strong.
Cover art for the single “Everybody’s trying to figure me out”
It Has to Come from Me
Finally, she stops trying to get him to admit or feel something. Instead, she feels her own pain. There’s a trio of songs on the back half of the album that walk us through this.
First, Try to feel my pain…is just that. She sings, “I try to feel my pain, but I don't know which way.” This song is her first admission of vulnerability, “I know it’ll be rough at night when I can’t feel you by my side.” That vulnerability is a gateway.
On the next song Spinning, she’s in the middle of discomfort, “Been dizzy and down, but I’m trying to forget about it.” Her pain is in her body, but she doesn’t understand it yet. Instead of moving forward, she’s….spinning.
Finally on Cry, pain crashes over her: “I just cry.” But the pain is productive, “I can finally see it clear” and “Now I’m moving through it”.
As the saying goes, “if you’re going through hell, keep going.” She keeps going.
Cover art for the single “Relationships”
I Never Gave Two Fucks Anyway
On the last song Now it’s time, she feels free: “I can’t wait anymore for you to set me free. It isn’t yours to give, it has to come from me.”
Yay! She learns that “the real barrier to break is the one I feel inside.” It’s not about her ex-boyfriend, it’s about herself. Knowing that she is enough, that she decides her own identity.
Finally, we get the break-through of this break-up: “it’s time to let go.”
It’s our perfect ending….or is it?
Haim closes out the album with a big guitar riff. Under that, barely audible, we hear:
You will always find a way
To keep feeling okay
With lying to my face
It was not for me to wait
It was not for me to change
Am I reaching out to say
I never gave two fucks anyway?
This is why I love Haim. This ending shoves away the idea that women have to be good or perfect or above it. There is no altruism or forgiveness here. So often, women are made to accept mistreatment, then expected to take the high road. Haim refuses.
This is her perspective and she doesn’t care how it comes off. His lying was the problem. Her role in breaking the cycle wasn’t to change (although she did). It was to stop waiting for him to change—to leave. To quit.
She isn’t following a comfortable script. If she wants to get messy, she’ll mess it up. If she wants one more hook-up to prove she has power over him, she’ll do it. She’ll do whatever she wants.
Which brings us right back to the beginning of the album. Lyrics off track one are: “I'll do whatever I want, I'll see who I wanna see, I'll fuck off whenever I want, I'll be whatever I need.”
She might have quit her boyfriend, but in the end—and the beginning—she doesn’t quit herself.
A member of Haim doing what she does best…. burning it to the ground.
