Welcome To Haleluya Hailu’s Island
Every Tuesday, from 3 to 4 in the afternoon, Haleluya and her fellow musicophiles host Vibe Check on Simon Fraser University’s college radio station CJSF 90.1FM. As stated in the show’s description on their social media, Vibe Check is an hour-long platform where “a new collective of young artists interview other upcoming artists from the industry.”
Vibe Check follows the traditional format of the host asking the question and the guest(s) responding, but yanks away the possibility of being pretentious by inserting tidbits of light anecdotes and comradery between musicians. At Vibe Check, the only requirement for the guest is that you do music and you have something to say. “When I started doing [the show] with my friends, we were always making sure that it was as conversational as possible.” The Q&A format dissipates as soon as the guests themselves become more willing to ask questions back, creating a comfortable atmosphere for everyone in the room/Zoom call where the lack of tensity inspires thoughtful dialogue.
The most rewarding aspect of hosting the show, Haleluya realized, was getting invaluable enlightenment from the guests. “It’s not an interview asking you questions. It’s just as if I’m a musician asking for advice. That’s kind of the format of the radio show, and I’ve gotten to use the advice from those interviews in my writing, my releases and my philosophy.”
Haleluya’s gotten “weird” songwriting advice over the many interviews, which has proven to be quite effective when she implements them into her work. “I go on lots of walks now because somebody was like, ‘Yo, going on walks really helps.’ Now, I’m obsessed with going on hours-long walks with a notebook.”
When asked which was the best advice she has ever received, she recalled one of the early interviews she conducted for the show. “There was a rapper duo, Sneaky Curdo and Bla Bla, and they’re talking about this concept of your ‘creative island’. They’re like, ‘It doesn’t matter what else is going on and other people’s bullshit, but you have to have your creative island, and that island has all the people who want to support you and interact with your art. [You should] want to grow your island or maintain your island.’ I was like, ‘I really like that.’”
What is not on her island is the “fluff”. The “fluff” is anything that holds a negative relationship with Haleluya; she’s not keen on maintaining connections with those that have no meaningful value to her. Haleluya did her fair share of spring cleaning her island near the beginning of the 2020 pandemic lockdown, taking out the “fluff” in bundles.
Fun Fact: The discoball on the photo used to be in Studio 54!
(The fact’s not true, but let’s pretend that it’s true.)
“I had a friend that I cut off. I think it was a week or two before everything went down with COVID,” Haleluya said. “This person was just a piece of shit. I remember another friend who went up to him and was like, ‘This is the stuff that you’re doing. It isn’t really positive. You’re saying very bad things about people you call friends. What do you gain from that? Just say sorry and move on from this.’ [The friend I had to cut off] refused to say the words ‘I’m sorry.’” Amid the bitter situation, Haleluya recognized that cutting them off from her life will only yield her benefits.
Another part of her 2020 spring cleaning was being more thoughtful in deciding which relationships she thought were authentic. “I remember going to school for yearbook signing when I was in Grade 11. I had my really close friends, and I remember seeing a bunch of other people that were like, ‘Oh my god! How are you doing? Hi!’ I was like, ‘I don’t like you.’”
What’s also not included on her island is a sizable majority of her time in high school, the taxpayer-funded social cesspool full of people you’ll (most likely) never meet or care about. “I only want to spend my energy on people that think of me and that care about me, and I want to make sure that I take care of them.”
What was possibly the nail in the coffin for her time in high school were the opportunists and clout chasers. When her EP, Greetings and Salutations, was released, several people “came out of the woodworks” in hopes of hanging out with a rising musician. That didn’t sit well with Haleluya at all; she said that the hardest people to convince to appreciate her work are the people who are “arms-length” away from you — so near yet still far. “I spent [so much time] trying to get people [and say]: ‘Hey, yo! You should totally listen to my music.’ But then they don’t want to necessarily even try until they see other people liking you, and I started noticing that as I left high school. People only really gave a shit when they saw other people caring.”
“That’s why I’m so happy I graduated,” Haleluya joked.
She spares no thought for people who don’t care for her. It’s not that she needs adoration of the masses, but what she does demand is some decent amount of respect and authenticity. She is not open to negotiating those requirements. A point of contention that corroborates this sentiment is the constant (and annoying) battle with her name; her name (first name pronounced ‘Hallelujah’; last name pronounced ‘Hi-Lew’) is part of her everyday struggle.
The slip-up is bound to happen when you try to say a name you’ve yet to be comfortable with (something I know all too well), and Haleluya knows that. What she will never tolerate is the disrespect that’s sometimes put on her name. “I had a really fucking annoying teacher,” Haleluya said in frustration. “I hope the worst for her, my 4th Grade teacher. She would constantly and purposely mispronounce my name. I have a huge issue with that.”
One way of averting such a struggle is by forfeiting and becoming deferential to the purpose-lacking ruffians. Anyone in Haleluya’s position can cede if they want to, but this musician’s not for ceding. “I think I’ve stopped compromising with my name. I always get [people saying to me], ‘Can I shorten your name?’ No. I genuinely despise being called ‘Hal’ because I think you’re being lazy.” What makes her disdain more understandable is the fact that most people are obliged to pronounce “long-ass white people names” correctly. “If you’re willing to learn how to say Timothée Chalamet properly, you can fucking suck it up and say my whole name.”
When Haleluya took out the fluff in her life, what she was left with were the core pillars that make up her creative island. The most prominent pillar is the creativity that energizes the whole operation; the enterprise is anything but functional without imagination.
Haleluya’s imagination is derived from her fondness of reading, perusing through the stories of Oscar Wilde to fill her mind with ornate, complex and witty sentences. “I think Oscar Wilde would be laughing if he saw the way people studied his work,” Haleluya said. “He was just this flamboyant gay dude who did not give one flying fuck about other people.” The irony is that the people who read Oscar Wilde’s work are the honour students who have “sticks up their asses,” as Haleluya noted.
Her imagination is widened with reading, but her imagination is quenched with writing. “I write a lot. I write obsessively. There’s probably something a little wrong in here with the amount I write,” said Haleluya as she pointed to her head. Considering the fact that it has resulted in releasing three singles, a music video and her first EP, Greetings and Salutations, no one can certainly state that there’s anything wrong with the amount of writing Haleluya does.
Her debut single, “Capitol Hill”, was the fire-starter she needed to finally ignite her career. Entirely composed and produced by herself (and with the help of LogicPro), “Capitol Hills” is perhaps a song fitting for the ears of the TikTok generation. On this track, the beats and production embellishments take a back seat to allow the lyrics to drive the song. The words are poetic and thought-provoking without reading — and sounding — pretentious. To any person, “Capitol Hills” is a soft and smooth entry into the music industry.
For Haleluya, however, her debut single was more so a goal post to get past in order to grow as an artist. She described the song with an “okay”, believing that her first release will never be her best. “I love the writing. It’s just the production. Not great,” she said. When she showed the working file for “Capitol Hills”, she visibly cringed at the sound of her isolated vocals and kept on mentioning the limited barebones production and the “not good” recording quality on this “super simple project”. That is perhaps par for the course if anyone is making music out of their bedroom with a Blue Yeti microphone and the lack of sound mixing knowledge.
“Capitol Hills”, to Haleluya, was the dare she put on herself to release anything. “I started paying to distribute in Spotify, saying ‘I’m going to put out a song.’ I’ve been working on writing [“Capitol Hills”] physically, playing the ukulele. I was like, ‘I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna finish this thing in a month.’” The only problem was that she paid for Spotify distribution for months without actually releasing the song.
Her hesitation stemmed from her innate perfectionism, which she had to realize was the one thing hindering her prospects at the time. “You have to get over yourself. That’s the thing,” she said. “Good advice is that your first song is never good or it’s never as good as you want it to be. I have lots of music friends of mine who won’t release their first single because they don’t think it’s ready. There’s literally no point waiting because the moment I put my first song out, I felt like a million more opportunities came to me just because I was vulnerable in being out there."
The debut single was the first stepping stone in her only-expanding music venture, which includes her recently released EP. Inspired by the “messy shit” Haleluya has had to previously manage in her social life, Greetings and Salutations is a reminder of how awkward being a teenager is. Starting off with Phil Collins-style drumming, she’s persuading you to evoke a specific scenario. It’s a party, and everyone at the party is wearing clothes that were bought at vintage stores (and that have the stylings from the last quarter of the 20th century). When listening to the EP, Haleluya tells you the story of a narrative that centres around “astrology and partying and regretting things.”
The EP has only been her launchpad to even more exposure, getting interviewed by the Vancouver Sun (and us at Fascinating Features, of course), as well as being highlighted by BandCamp, Various Small Flames and Rhythm Changes. Her music has even caught the ears of one notable man. “I came home [tired] and I was lying down and I went on Twitter. Then, I got a mention notification from Simon Le Bon from Duran Duran.” This was the tweet:
“I was like, ‘This is weird. I think they just have the wrong name.’ So I put my phone down. Then, I get tagged by another person.”
“Then I went to Instagram and they tagged me again.”
“I was like, ‘Oh fuck!’”
Simon Le Bon, the lead vocalist of English band Duran Duran, runs a show on SiriusXM, which means that only monthly subscribers can access his show. “So I paid for SiriusXM. I have to check and actually see and tune in, and my commercial radio debut was on WHOOOSH! Radio. Simon Le Bon from Duran Duran said my first name right. For the last name, he said ‘Hey-lu’ (instead of ‘Hi-Lew’). I guess it might be tricky phonetically. He said, ‘Haleluya Hey-lu’s song “Breakfast”! And they played it!”
Getting to hear her song on the radio was as sweet as it can be. It must be highlighted the perseverance she had to materialize her ambitions, which is perhaps another pillar on her island. She described to me the wall behind the laptop she used for her interview, which was plastered in pictures and checklists on index cards. The latter would be proven useful when she was working on her EP; she jotted down her master checklist on tasks to do before the release. “It makes me so happy [to see it] because I look at all of the stuff from my EP release and all of it’s checked off. You know how nice it is to check shit off?”
Haleluya’s rather organized and diligent in her music work to make up the fact that she doesn’t ask for help, believing that “nobody else can do [the work] the way you have it imagined in your head.” For instance, she made all the promotional material — “completely by myself,” she stressed. “My favourite thing I made was the announcement for the EP because the concept was a cereal commercial. I made it in two days in my bedroom. I got a bunch of lights and positioned them, then I was doing the self-timer. I edited it too and it took forever.”
“I sent an email to every college radio station in Canada, and I did that because nobody else would do that for me,” Haleluya said. “It’s also an immigrant parent philosophy that was passed on to me. You can do anything you want yourself. It’s hard to rely on other people because they don’t care as much about your career as you do. I’m banking on my own success ‘cause I don’t like relying on others. This is the thing I hear from musician folks. They’ll be like, ‘When my friend makes it, he’ll bring me with him.’ But then you don’t know that. I’d like to bank on the fact that I feel fulfilled and successful before I bank on somebody else.”
Here are some of the people who are on Haleluya’s creative island.