Doin’ it for themselves
Chloe x Halle stand their ground – and it shows
The metal wings stand out on the cover of Chloe x Halle’s new LP “Ungodly Hour.” The image shows sisters Halle and Chloe Bailey with their arms around each others’ waists, shining silver wings on their backs.
While making “Ungodly Hour,” the two cut out pictures and words from magazines and organized them into a collage on poster board. The phrase “the trouble with angels” kept popping out from the scraps of paper.
“Everyone thinks we are these angelic beings and, one, that’s a huge compliment, and two, we are pretty good girls who work really hard, but we’re also more complex than that,” Chloe told the Herald. “That’s what we wanted to share with this album. … That’s why with the album artwork you see us with the steel-like wings.”
Chloe wanted the music to have an edge while also showing that the sisters — both of whom are in their early 20s — have imperfections and flaws, and like it that way. Listening to “Ungodly Hour,” it’s hard to find those flaws.
Chloe and Halle wrote a huge chunk of the record on their own and co-wrote the remaining tracks. Chloe produced many of these tracks while collaborating with a few aces including Disclosure and Scott Storch on others. The pair fuse a ’90s R&B vibe with modern arrangements, beats and production and nods to Beyonce (Queen Bey signed Chloe x Halle to her Parkland label when the two were teens and executively produced “Ungodly Hour”). Young but tough, flirty and wise, the duo write about infidelity, boozy romance and naughty texts.
These wonderfully offcenter pop songs come from artists who know they are best people to steer their art and career.
“The first two months of trying to put together this album we were in a headspace that wasn’t really ours,” Halle said. “We were taking what other people were saying into consideration, considering what other people wanted from us, considering altering and changing ourselves. After two months of failed sessions of songs we hated, we said, ‘We are going to go back to just being confident in ourselves and who we are’ and started from scratch.”
The pair got a house in Malibu together and started writing. Many of the album’s standouts — “Baby Girl,” “ROYL” — came in a surge. Once they were reminded they didn’t need to take notes from anyone else, the rest of the album came quickly.
“We are so certain of who we are, so no matter what we stand our ground,” Chloe said. “I think that’s why we are starting to see the fruits of labor now, because we have stuck to our guns since the beginning.”
If the sisters seem overconfident, brash or serious, they aren’t. Well, they’re serious about making great music (and movies and TV, both star in the series “Grown-ish” and Halle will play Ariel in the 2021 liveaction “The Little Mermaid”). When you watch the video for “Do It,” the first single from “Ungodly Hour,” you can see that days of work went into the intense choreography. You can also see the sisters loving the work.
“I get the greatest joy singing and dancing and choreographing and writing and producing with my sister,” Chloe said.
“We are so hands on from dancing to editing to all of it. We have a say in it because we are using our voices so everything can be heard the way it’s supposed to be heard. And it’s so much fun to see the finished product.”