FEATURE:
Modern Heroines
Part Forty-One: Chloe x Halle
___________
I have included the amazing…
PHOTO CREDIT: Kenneth Cappello/HIGHSNOBIOETY
Chloe x Halle on my blog before. They are an stunning duo that I feel are going to be icons of the future – there are some who say they are icons already. In their early-twenties, it might be a lot to put on their shoulders. That said, they are definite role models and have given voice and strength to say many young fans. In terms of providing a little bit of biography, here is some background:
“Chloe x Halle is an R&B duo composed of sisters Chloe and Halle Bailey. At a young age, the sisters performed in minor acting roles before moving from Mableton, Georgia, to Los Angeles in 2012. The two began posting music covers to YouTube and were acknowledged by Beyoncé, who became their mentor and later signed them to her label, Parkwood Entertainment. They subsequently released the EP Sugar Symphony (2016) and the mixtape The Two of Us (2017).
The duo gained further prominence after starring in the sitcom Grown-ish (2018–present) and releasing their debut album The Kids Are Alright (2018), for which they earned two Grammy Award nominations including Best New Artist. In 2020, they released their second studio album Ungodly Hour to critical acclaim, earning them another three Grammy Award nominations. The album's lead single "Do It" became the duo's first song to chart on the Billboard Hot 100”.
One big oversight was that Chloe x Halle lost out at this year’s GRAMMYs. I thought they would walk away with at least one award! As Teen Vogue explained, it was quite a big snub:
“The 2021 Grammys were a historic night for many artists. But that doesn't free the Recording Academy from all criticism. And Chloe x Halle fans have a legitimate reason to be upset after Sunday night's telecast. After being snubbed from the main R&B album category, the young music duo, consisting of sisters Chloe and Halle Bailey, didn't take home a single Grammy award.
Their sophomore album, Ungodly Hour, was nominated for Best Progressive R&B Album, they also scored noms for Best Traditional R&B Performance ("Wonder What She Thinks Of Me") and Best R&B Song ("Do It"). For every category there are winners and losers, but that doesn't mean people have to agree with the Recording Academy's choices, especially given how Black women are often shut out from major awards and, well, relegated to categories like “Best Progressive R&B Album” versus Pop or general categories.
There's also the fact that Chloe x Halle have uniquely adapted to an unprecedented time for live music, finding creative new ways to perform their songs at every opportunity and mastering the art of the at-home performance. They work hard and somehow they make it look not only effortless but undeniably fun. For Chloe, 22, and Halle, 20, every performance is its own visual world, and in 2020, a year that was so hard for so many, they created a whole universe”.
I am going to get to their new album, Ungodly Hour, in a minute. I want to bring in a few interviews before getting to that. It is an amazing record that marks Chloe x Halle for huge things. It is worth discovering more about the sisters and how they have progressed and why they are so important. Not only is Ungodly Hour a step forward from their debut, The Kids Are Alright; they promoted the album during the pandemic – and did so in a hugely impactful and effective! We learn more in this interview from The Guardian in September 2020:
“The release of their second album, the presciently titled Ungodly Hour, has seen the pair school the world in the art of pandemic promo. “I feel like we’ve been making the best of what we have,” says Chloe, casually evoking the cluster of visually spectacular performances and photoshoots – including an entire high-fashion ad campaign – they’ve staged from the tennis court of their family home (admittedly, having a good lockdown requires certain advantages).
Their graft has not gone unnoticed. Until recently, the sisters were primarily known as Beyoncé proteges, the pop giant having signed them to her management company in 2015 off the back of their YouTube covers of her own tracks (the duo also racked up views for versions of songs by Adele, Ariana Grande and Lorde). They appeared in the Lemonade visual album and opened for their mentor on tour, all the while producing a stream of music that, while impressive, never quite elevated them to superstar territory – until now.
Whereas their debut album, The Kids Are Alright, focused on the agony and ecstasy of mid-adolescence, Ungodly Hour sees the pair sift through their love lives, calling out cheaters, playboys and prolific booty-callers. But it’s not simply good girls versus bad boys; the album is suffused with a compelling moral ambiguity. Wonder What She Thinks of Me is told from the perspective of the “other woman”, while on the darkly comic Tipsy, the pair fantasise about murdering flaky love interests. (“It is such a shame that they went missing, they can’t find ’em now / Oh, I wonder how I accidentally put them in the ground.”) “We were pissed off writing that song!” insists Halle. “Sometimes when people mess with your heart, you’re like: ‘Dude I gotta do something about it.’” Chloe is keen to clarify that “we never would kill somebody. But I feel like if everything’s so general, the song gets boring.”
Fantasising about offing errant boyfriends is one form of catharsis, but there is also more wholesome consolation to be found on the album. “When we write these songs it’s to make ourselves feel better, so when we listen back, it continues to make us feel better,” says Chloe. “I laugh at myself because there’s been so many times when I’m feeling like I don’t have too many friends or a relationship didn’t work out, I’ll play Lonely and instantly feel better.”
Entering the music industry as teens, the pair say they were routinely patronised in the studio. “Low key and high key at the same time,” nods Chloe. “People would tell us what we were creating was too complex for the average ear. I feel like that’s so not cool to tell two young creatives who are pushing the boundaries, especially when we’re in a world where everything’s so manufactured exactly the same.”
One person who did not underestimate them was Beyoncé. “Just knowing that she appreciated how complex it was and [hearing her] go on about how beautiful something was truly meant a lot,” says Chloe. The pair still run all their work by her, although she didn’t end up having much input into Ungodly Hour. “She listened to the album and she had close to no notes, which is pretty rare because she’s such a perfectionist!” she beams”.
Ungodly Hour came out in June of last year and, in my view, it was one of the best albums of the year. I wanted to source from an interview from Billboard, where Chloe x Halle discussed working alongside Beyoncé:
“This industry can be hypercritical of young women. How have you managed evolving as artists — and people — in that environment?
Chloe: A lot of people think of us as little perfect angels that don’t have any problems, and that’s not true. We really wanted to show the imperfect side of us on this project. We have fallen in love, fallen out of love, had our hearts broken. We’re still learning to love our insecurities. That’s what this album symbolizes for us: “Will you love me at the ungodly hour?” We have to give a lot of that credit to our parents too. It’s so funny, when we were playing the songs for them, our dad almost had a heart attack...
Halle: ...because we expose ourselves in the music. A lot of the things we don’t tell our parents, it’s in the songs. When they hear them, they’re like, “Oh, this is what’s happening? OK.”
What kind of direction does Beyoncé give you?
Chloe: What’s really cool is that she gives us complete freedom. She has been in this game since she was so young, and she knows what it feels like to be able to use her voice. She doesn’t take that away from us, and she lets us create the art we want to create.
Halle: It’s freeing when you have full creative control and you don’t have to rely on anyone else. We truly feel that it is our story to tell. We don’t want anybody else to tell our story.
Chloe: We’ll just do whatever the hell we want and see if it sticks. Then we’ll go back the next day and listen to it and be like, “We really like this!”
Halle: Or, “This is shit.”
Both: “This is bad.” (Both laugh.)”.
As young Black women in the music industry, the Bailey sisters have had to face more obstacles than most artists. I think there has been a lot of discussion since the Black Lives Matter protests that we saw last year (and this). Releasing an album when the murder of George Floyd sparked so much anger and desire for change must have been emotional. The duo discussed this with GQ last August:
“There's been so much going on this year, from coronavirus to Black Lives Matter. What has it been like releasing Ungodly Hour against that backdrop?
C: It's been interesting, but we're so grateful that, through this chaotic time, we can still try to find the beauty in it. I hope that that's what we did with our album, that we brought some light into people's lives. I feel like everything happens for a reason and this truly is the “ungodly hour”. In an odd way, the time when we put it out, it's exactly when it was supposed to come.
H: Normally when we release an album or a project, we do the press tour in New York, then we go back home and do the press tour in LA. Then we normally travel all over and go to all the radio stations and do interviews there. Doing it from home has been interesting, but it's been really positive actually too. It's amazing what you can do from home, with the performances and interviews. It's wild. Maybe we've never even needed to actually meet up and stuff. We can just do it through our computer.
You have also always had so much creative control over your work. Entering the industry at such a young age, was it ever a struggle for you to get that freedom?
H: What I think we got really lucky and blessed with is our parents, who have always instilled in us that we can do anything we put our minds to. We've always had a hand in our creativity because we feel like it's our story to tell. We write and produce everything that we touch, because it's so important. I feel like that's never been something that we've had to fight for, because we've just been like, “No, this is it. This is what we're doing.” When we were ten and eight years old, our dad sat us down and taught us the basics of how to write a song. Just knowing that we have the power within has been a theme and lesson that our parents have always instilled in our brains. Collaboration has also always been exciting and interesting for us, because we're used to working with one another. That's our safe space. With my sister, I can be truthful and honest. When you're working with somebody new, you're scared to step on their toes. That's why creativity for us has always been like, “Yes, we're going to do it.”
Do you have any favourite memories from working on the album?
H: Mine would be writing the song “Baby Girl”. It was one of the first songs we wrote for Ungodly Hour and it was the day after Christmas. We decided to rent an Airbnb in Malibu right by the beach – the house was literally in the water. It was no parents allowed, just Chloe and I and our brother. We made 15 to 20 songs in that weekend, because we were just really inspired being by the water. “Baby Girl" was a really beautiful message that was really healing to me and my sister. Sometimes when you're feeling down, you need those empowering, encouraging words and that was like a conversation with ourselves throughout the whole album. After making it, I remember we just both felt like it instantly made us feel calmer and better.
C: I just feel like the whole project really embodies strength in a sonic form. I love how the themes, whether we're coming from a pretty vulnerable state, like we do in “Lonely” and “Forgive Me”, it still comes from a place of power. I'm happy that the music represents strong women in showing all of our layers in every way. It's pretty cool how my sister and I have two completely different lives and two different perspectives, because I feel like that's helped layer it not only musically, but lyrically”.
PHOTO CREDIT: Chris Pizzello/AP Photo
I will get to some reviews for Ungodly Hour soon. It has been really interesting reading up about Chloe x Halle and bonding with a remarkable duo. What I like about an album like Ungodly Hour is how much the pair have grown and how confident they sound. They are so mature, innovative and inspiring with regards their music and how they compose themselves. In an interview with HIGHSNOBIETY, they were asked about their musical evolution:
“Let’s get into the album: In the past, your music has had an innocence about it, but this album is pretty grown.
C: You know, with anything in life, we never like to force it. Halle just turned 20. I'll be 22 in July. Naturally, the music will just grow with that. We're sharing our experiences, sharing what we're going through, whether it's heartbreak or falling in love or our insecurities — what makes us tick. People only really know us as, like, little sweet angels and all of that. And everyone is multi-layered.
“Busy Boy” is about a guy who sleeps around and sends you unsolicited late night photos of, well, a very particular body part of his. Are lines like this born from real life?
H: Absolutely. All the songs on the album are pulled from real-life experiences, real-life relationships. And for “Busy Boy,” everyone can relate to knowing this guy who is just so hot, he is just A+ everywhere. But everyone knows him as a player. They know he jumps around from girl to girl. It was funny to talk about that because in our little girl group [of friends], sometimes we do find that one dude who has tried to talk to all of us. And we laugh about it and we kiki about it.
Are you able to find time to date and have fun, and do what young people do?
H: Of course!
C: You know, we explore. We date around. We're learning as we experience life. And it helps stimulate the lyrics.
You taught yourselves how to produce, arrange, write, and record your music at a very young age, but now that there is this bigger spotlight, is it important to still create in that more organic way?
C: Absolutely. Yeah. If we didn't keep that, I don't think we would even have finished this album. We love creating at home so much. You know, [our first album] The Kids Are Alright, we created the whole thing in our living room. [For this album], we converted the garage and carpeted it up and made it into our little studio here. We always prefer home and working on our laptop and arranging all the weird harmonies together and recording each other.
We worked with so many amazing producers and songwriters on this album, but at the end of every session, we would take the stems, and we would revamp them up and really add, like, our sauce to the songs afterward so it really felt like us. But also, half the album is strictly just us and our production and writing as well. We executive produced it. That's the only way to do it. If it starts to feel forced or bad, we walk away.
When I see you two on camera and in interviews, I’m struck by how poised you both are, from such a young age. You present yourself almost perfectly. But I wonder if that ever feels like pressure? You’ve had to be really mature since before most kids ever really do.
H: It's not a persona. It's not something that we turn on and we turn off. It's just the way that our parents raised us. Sometimes, we do get compliments, like, "Oh my gosh. You guys are always so happy and positive. You guys are angels!" And, you know, that’s one side of it, of course. I know some people put us on a pedestal. And I think that what hones us in on continuing to just be positive beings and lights is the way we grew up, our parents constantly reminding us that all of these things don't matter. All of these grand things don't matter”.
PHOTO CREDIT: Campbell Addy for Teen Vogue
To finish up, I am going to pull in a couple of positive reviews for Ungodly Hour. It is an album that I loved when it came out nearly a year ago – I am still listening to it now. This is what The Line of Best Fit observed when they reviewed Ungodly Hour:
“Take, for example, the angsty “Don’t Make It Harder On Me”, which sounds like a deep-cut by The Supremes turned on its head: “Don’t make it harder on me. / Don’t make it harder on me / I told you not to love me / And now you’re growing on me”. Channelling late '60s doo-wop and contemporary urban pop, the song is as much a kiss-off as it is an unabashed love-song, with the duo sounding off on the ramifications of a potential romance against an edgy, orchestral backdrop. Make no mistake though, the sisterhood draw power from their previous heartaches, crafting anthems across the rest of the album that speak to their self-confidence, such as the empowering “Do It” (“I’m just with the crew / We ain’t out here lookin’ for boo / ‘Cause some nights be better with you…”) and the playful “Forgive Me” (“Movin’ too fast, now you caught in the middle / Try so hard to keep up, now you single / Bettin’ you’ll regret what you did just a little / Ah, ah”).
Elsewhere, the duo channel early-nineties Sade on the jazzy “Busy Boy” before trading off kisses with Swae Lee on the Mike WiLL Made-It-produced “Catch Up”, concluding this one-two punch with the confessional “Overwhelmed”, which sees Chloe and Halle ruminate on the pressures of their newly-found stardom: “Holdin’ my breath ‘til my face turns blue / Head under water / Breathe deeply, they said / I need a weekend again”. At odds with the otherwise up-tempo sound of the record, this moment of vulnerability speaks to the strength drawn by the duo in their togetherness – a theme that emerges most prominently on the album’s title track: “When you decide to love yourself / When you decide you need someone / When you don’t have to think about it / Love me at the ungodly hour”. Acting as both sultry invitation and empowered self-confession, the song is a clarion call for all those who deign to diminish the duo’s talents – talents that blaze through on Ungodly Hour with a full and unrelenting force”.
When Our Culture sat down with Ungodly Hour, they were definitely impressed with that they heard:
“Across the album, Chloe x Halle deliver lavish, confident R&B tunes that boast a winning combination of angelic vocal harmonies and frequently audacious lyrics. “Better, baby, better treat me better/ Better than those other guys who change up like the weather/ It is such a shame that they went missing, they can’t find ’em now/ Oh, I wonder how I accidentally put them in the ground,” they sing on the bouncy, infectious ‘Tipsy’, while ‘Busy Boy’ is fearless yet funny in its depiction of more mature themes, with the line “It’s four o’clock/ You sendin’ me too many pictures of your…” immediately sticking out. The album’s cover perfectly encapsulates the tone of the record – deceptively innocent on the surface, but self-empowering and playfully salacious at its core.
Ungodly Hour might not be the most original R&B album out there, but it’s so well-executed that it’s hard not to revel in its joys. It helps that the production, much of which is handled by Chloe herself, occasionally adds a bit more punch to the album’s gently unassuming qualities – small details like the finger-snaps on the Latin-inspired ‘Baby Girl’ or the pounding drums on ‘Tipsy’. Meanwhile, the Disclosure-assisted title track packs a killer of a chorus as the duo coil effortlessly around the song’s dreamy instrumental. “When you don’t have to think about it/ Love me at the ungodly hour,” they proclaim.
While part of the album’s strength lies in the singers’ self-determination, Chloe x Halle aren’t afraid to express a softer side, particularly on the stripped-down interlude ‘Overwhelmed’ and the tender follow-up ‘Lonely’, which pulls you in to offer a warm, comforting embrace. While the album’s second half falters slightly – ‘Catch Up’ feat. Swae Lee being the record’s one big misstep – ‘Don’t Make it Harder On Me’ is a soulful late-album highlight that showcases the duo’s classic R&B influences. Nothing on Ungodly Hour is particularly new, but the way Chloe x Halle tiptoe around those superficial binaries – classy and modern, innocent and sultry, angelic and sinful – gives it a refreshing edge. And besides, they pull it off with such grace and charisma that you can’t help but succumb to its rhythm”.
I will end up with a short playlist containing the best Chloe x Halle cuts so far. Even though they are young and their career is in its infancy, they are going to go a long way and release a lot of amazing music. Role models to so many people around the world, I feel the duo are going to be icons of the future. You only need to read interviews they have conducted and listen to their music…
TO know that.