Hollywood Hailee Steinfeld pours heartbreak after Niall Horan split into new album, Half Written Story
After splitting from her rumoured ex-boyfriend Niall Horan, Hailee Steinfeld reveals more about heartbreak on her new album.
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Hailee Steinfeld has been cautious not to say her ex-boyfriend’s name once while promoting her new Half Written Story.
The breakout single I Love You’s revealed her broken heart, yet it was the title of the EP’s closing song Wrong Direction which fans took as the biggest clue the protagonist of her grief and anger was rumoured former flame Niall Horan.
While the pair never confirmed they were an item, a few public outings were enough for their stan armies to engage in 10 months worth of relationship analysis before the young pop stars reportedly called it quits in December 2018.
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When Horan released his second solo album Heartbreak Weather in March, his fans combed its songs for lyrical weapons they could fire at his Pitch Perfect 2 ex.
They were at it again on May 8 when Steinfeld dropped her EP, firing off social media salvos about their displeasure with lyrics such as, “My brother hates you, my mother hates you, My father and sister, too/Wait, I don’t even have a sister, But if I did, she’d hate you” in the track Man Up. Ouch.
The “Steinfans” had her back, filling her comment fields with plenty of love for the 23-year-old actor and pop artist, who is taking the Taylor Swift amendment – never say his name out loud and let the fans figure it out.
“I wanted to be honest with myself about feelings I was having,” Steinfeld says about the EP as she quarantines with her family in Los Angeles.
“I am a very private person; I think everyone is entitled to their privacy and one thing I do find with my fans is they have always been so kind and respectful but always have as way of knowing if something is wrong with me, if I am upset and down, or anxious and not feeling myself.”
Those fans have grown up with Steinfeld, who announced her arrival as a prodigious actor in the 2010 film True Grit, receiving an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting actor at the age of 14.
Her performance of the song Flashlight in Pitch Perfect 2 added pop star to her resume, with Republic Records signing her in 2015 to a major label deal.
Steinfeld’s debut single Love Myself – which fans celebrated as a self-empowerment anthem while critics claimed it as an ode to self-pleasure – cracked the American top 30.
She teamed with hitmaking producer Zedd and electronic duo Grey on the track Starving in 2016, with that collaboration cementing her status as a chart star, reaching the top 5 in Australia and achieving double platinum sales.
But a plethora of popcorn movie projects and critically acclaimed film and television outings have limited her opportunities to get into the recording studio.
When she finished filming the first series of Dickinson, the historic comedy drama Apple TV series about American poet Emily Dickinson, Steinfeld wanted to get cracking on new music.
“It’s important for my own sanity to focus on one thing at a time,” she says.
“After I finished series one of Dickinson, I knew I could come home and work on music. And then I was back shooting series two,” she says.
“I didn’t realise how much playing that character might have influenced (my songwriting) until I got into the studio after the shoot. I felt like I had to make a commitment to myself to be honest, to not hold back in my writing.
“I did wonder if that had something to do with the fact I had just played a writer who fearlessly wrote about everything on her mind – and all of it was forbidden … but that’s what kept her alive.”
Steinfeld said she was able to share her vulnerability and heartbreak in song by pretending no one would ever hear it – or read it and post their opinions on social media.
Like her pop peers Billie Eilish, Dua Lipa and Halsey who convert the anxieties and angst of their emotional lives into charting art, she is acutely aware that “authenticity” is the pop currency of now.
“Fans of music, people who love and listen to music know when it’s authentic and when it’s not,” she says.
“It can be terrifying as an actor. I have achieved the same level of vulnerability as an actor but I’m protected by playing a character.
“For me, it has been cathartic to write these songs but I remember at one point, way back in my mind, I was saying to myself ‘Just write the song! No one has to hear it.’ That gave me the freedom to be as vulnerable and honest and truthful as possible.”
Her first single I Love You’s borrows its opening melodic hook from No More I Love You’s, the 1986 song by English new wave duo The Lover Speaks and made a hit in 1995 by Annie Lennox.
Steinfeld is a huge fan of Lennox – aren’t we all? – and keen to hear what she thinks of her treatment of the song.
“I would absolutely love to get it touch with her and hear what she thinks of the music,” she says.
No doubt this lover of fashion and visual aesthetic would also appreciate her take on the stylish, black and white video for I Love You’s.
When Team Steinfeld’s first attempt at a video for the song ended up on the cutting room floor, she put her hand up to make her directorial debut and came up with a part performance, part fashion campaign clip.
“We made a video for I Love You’s which didn’t turn out … so when it came to doing it a second time, I threw my hat in the ring. There wasn’t too much resistance to the idea,” she says.
“As we always are, we were down to the wire for time and had the idea of making something stripped back and inspired by a bunch of my favourite fashion campaigns, to give people room to listen to it, rather than being too much.”
Half Written Story is out now.
Originally published as Hollywood Hailee Steinfeld pours heartbreak after Niall Horan split into new album, Half Written Story