Just in time for your “hot girl summer” outro, Harris Hills has delivered a new breakup anthem entitled “HATE”. This single reflects the conflicts of finding yourself walking the line between love and hate in the wake of a toxic relationship. Hills’ gentle melodies guide the melancholy, yet hopeful, instrumentation while listeners take on the weight of his thoughtful lyricism. It’s a song you can cry to, sing along with, and count on to deliver you out of your worst heartbreaks.
Luckily for the residents of middle Tennessee, you can experience “HATE” and other Harris Hills originals live at Jack Vinoy’s Debut Album Show, where Hills will be opening alongside Brian Brown on September 1st at The East Room. Tickets can be purchased at https://www.ticketweb.com/event/jack-vinoy-brian-brown-the-east-room-tickets/13822953 .
Before a day of rehearsals and show preparation, Harris was able to shed some light on his creative process and direction for his current and upcoming music.
August 7th, 2024 brought us your latest single, “HATE”. This comes about 2 months after your previous single, “Cops and Strippers”. Were you curating the single for the entirety of that time? What did your creative process for Hate look like?
“I think both of the songs were made really really close together, but we picked Cops and Strippers first to kind of be like…on our punky stuff. Hate was something where I wanted to go more, not commercial, but I wanted it to be palatable for everybody to hear my version of a breakup anthem. I think the creative process behind it; I make all my music alone in the studio. As much as I have a bunch of people around, and like, I have a lot of people come to my studio to produce and always do writing sessions. I usually write everything alone and produce everything alone. I get nervous and scared.”
What drove the inspiration for your single, “HATE”? And what is driving the inspiration for your upcoming releases?
“I think the motivation behind “HATE” is like in the same world as “Cops and Strippers”. Whenever I’m trying to make a song, I don’t want to do the typical approach where I just like…I’m always trying to figure out how to say the most off-the-wall stuff. And so, I think I wanted to make a very, how do I say it, contradicting breakup song that just focuses on a very specific part of not liking somebody. You know, not liking their features and just being totally put off by somebody rather than just talking about getting broken up with. I kind of wanted to be mean, but at the same time I was trying to be like..there’s bars in the song that are very contradicting. You’re like, “Oh! So he hates this person? He loves them?”. I think relationships are really confusing so I like to write music that’s not confusing, but lyrically it makes you feel the same way it does when you’re in an argument with someone you love.”
The visualizer for “HATE” features vibrant primary colors overlaid with a picturesque nature scene. Tell us about the process for the visualizer, and if it came together in the way you imagined.
“So, I wish I could say it came together exactly how I imagined, but, I actually had like zero creative control behind it. It was actually Jayden (Jayden Giles, manager) who came to my house and forced me to pick out an outfit and was like, “We’re going to go do the video for “HATE”.” We knew we wanted to keep it very simple like we wanted to just be outside and do something that was very like… I don’t know, we just wanted to create a landscape rather than do a story-driven music video. But yeah, he really just like had this vision in his head of all these shots and we went out. Piecing it together, it accidentally turned into a really visually appealing sequence. We also only worked with like thirty-five minutes of daylight before the sunset. It wasn’t chaotic at all, every shot had its purpose. We didn’t have much B roll or anything, it was just a couple shots we pieced together that we thought would work really well with the song.”
What do you enjoy more about your music: the live representation or the creative process?
“I love the creative process. I’m still new to the live performance. I’ve done live performances before and I really like it when I can connect with people. That’s really the main thing I do music for, to connect with people. I love yapping and I realized that I can yap in a rhyme, in a rhythmic pattern and people will listen to it more because it has instruments behind it. So that was kinda cool. I love both, but definitely the creative process. I like being locked in a dark room and making music… for four days.”
This is your debut performance since rebranding. Tell us about your rebrand, and what you hope to accomplish.
“Yeah so, I did a show and a tour back in October. I went to Murfreesboro, Spokane, and I went to Boise, Idaho. I primarily was pushing a lot of the rap and the hip hop songs that I had, which we still have in the catalog. There are a couple that like, still have that aggression and punchiness that we were doing back then. I’ve always kinda made pop music and indie-inspired music. I think we just took time to realize this is the direction we want to go in more. Being in Nashville has really pushed me in that direction. Everyone here is a good live musician, and it’s just a bit more instrument-heavy. I think it was just a natural progression. It’s taken a while to get a better body of music because, um, I feel like I come from producing rap since I was like 14. So it’s always been so easy for me to just hop in that lane and this has been way, way, way different. A good different.”
What can we expect from Harris Hills in the coming months?
“More shows, and definitely an EP. We’re gonna stop being losers and putting singles out all the time. We’re gonna do a pretty good body of work, and hopefully more visuals and more cool content as well. We want to become really multifaceted with blogs and just a bit more of a peek inside the entire process. Everything is gonna be bigger, bolder, cooler, once we get comfy into this new style.”
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Nice article grem!