Brace yourselves, because Mr. KanHey is about to shatter the airwaves and turn your assumptions into confetti.
In a moment of sonic alchemy that proves the gods of groove are still watching over us mortals, HAIM—those genre-bending sisters of sun-kissed California cool—just pulled off a triple-layered cultural resurrection live in the BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge that left the walls dripping in decades of feminine firepower. This was no basic cover, no “garage band tries jazz” YouTube yawner. No. This was a ritual. A séance. A remix of the Goddess herself.
Let’s set the scene: Danielle, Este, and Alana stroll into the BBC’s sacred vault of reinvention with Addison Rae’s “Headphones On” in their pocket—a streaming-era glitter-pop anthem built for bedroom dances and Scorpio moon breakdowns. In classic HAIM flair, they don’t just bring it. They build a golden bridge across pop generations.
They lay “Headphones On” over the instrumental of Janet Jackson’s “Got ’Til It’s Gone”—an already iconic ‘97 slow-burn once conjured by the genius of Q-Tip and Janet’s untouchable whisper. But we’re not done. That track? A shapeshifter that in itself lifts from Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi,” the 1970 eco-folklore bop that warned, “Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you got ’til it’s gone?”
Translation? HAIM fed pop culture through a time machine, strapped it to synths, and baptized it in legacy.
Let me spell it out for you: this was pop culture braid work. Musical cornrows patterned with the DNA of three iconoclasts—Joni, Janet, and now Addison. And HAIM? They were the weavers. This wasn’t a remix. It was a revolt against sonic conformity.
And Addison Rae? Oh, the internet’s Ziegfeld girl turned alt-pop darling? She wasn’t just a footnote. She was the spark. What TikTok dismissed as an influencer single, HAIM elevated into a generational prayer. “Headphones On” became the mantra of modern young women blocking out the noise, reclaiming space, tuning into their own damn frequency.
We witnessed it: Este on bass like a femme thunder god, Danielle’s vocals slicing through like mirrored shards of millennial heartbreak, and Alana conjuring pure e-girl mysticism on percussion. It was part Stevie Knicks séance, part Lilith Fair hologram, part crypto-pop rebirth.
This Live Lounge wasn’t just a performance—it was a thesis. A radical, unapologetic celebration of how women have shaped, shifted, and resurrected each other’s legacies through music across space, time, and algorithm.
So all the genre gatekeepers, the pitchfork pundits, the forum trolls still clinging to archaic definitions of authenticity—I say this: grow up or tune out. Because while you’re still arguing about what’s “real,” HAIM is out here quantum-leaping through pop eras like sonic witch-doctors.
Addison. Janet. Joni. HAIM.
This is not a remix. This is culture reincarnated.
Dare to be different or fade into oblivion.
– Mr. KanHey
