Stay Puzzling: HAIM’s “Everybody’s Trying to Figure Me Out”

Seeing as how Sex and the City was a big part of the proverbial mood board for HAIM’s upcoming fourth album, it’s worth repeating a line that Miranda Hobbes (Cynthia Nixon) tells Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) after the big boss at her law firm presumes she’s a lesbian: “They seem so relieved to have finally ‘figured me out.’” For Danielle Haim, who wrote “Everybody’s Trying to Figure Me Out” in the throes of a panic attack, she happens to know that people can try to figure her out all they want, but they’re still never going to. And yes, there is a touch of that signature brand of Bradshaw narcissism in a lyric like, “I feel like I might live inside of everyone’s thoughts.” 

Of course, many a person is guilty of believing they’re top of mind in other people’s headspace. A phenomenon further compounded by the hyper-solipsistic nature of social media. In any case, Danielle Haim gave further context about the song by describing, “I started writing this after a panic attack I had the night I got home from tour. I was very confused because I was SO SO SO happy about our incredible tour, but something about being alone with myself scared the shit out of me. After a lot of reflecting, I realized I’ve let a lot of people try and tell me how I should live my life, but I realized in making everyone else happy, I lost myself. I wrote this as a way to believe in myself again and quit being scared to do what I want. I hope this finds anyone who needs it.” And surely, it will. Just as “Relationships” did (granted, that song doesn’t exactly offer a solution to the problem of being a straight woman who’s still trying to traffic in monogamy). But, in contrast to the latter, “Everybody’s Trying to Figure Me Out” is all about the importance of the relationship that one has with herself. 

And yes, there’s a reason that one is frequently deemed the most difficult relationship of all. Because it often involves making an effort at being nice to someone you hate (especially, if you’re of the Jewish persuasion like the Haim sisters—for those who forgot the term “self-hating Jew”). Which is why Danielle makes such “too in my head” observations as, “I wish I could slow the tape down to the point where everything stops/Everybody’s tryna figure me out now/And I don’t know why/There are things I’ve done I can’t deny/They might have saved my life/Everybody’s got their own decisions/And I know that I’ve got mine.” Or, as Morrissey once phrased it on The Smiths’ “William, It Was Really Nothing,” “Everybody’s got to live their life/And God knows I’ve got to live mine.” So, too, do the Haim sisters. 

Which is why Danielle grows increasingly defiant as the song progresses, pronouncing, “Renters’ rights, squatters’ rights/I’ll be the gatekeeper for the rest of my life/I don’t want your charity/Spend a night in the cold if it keeps me free/Everybody’s got a bed they’re sleeping in/And I know that I’ve made mine.” Or as Olivia Rodrigo puts it, “It’s me who’s been making the bed/Pull the sheets over my head.” But really, Courtney Love said it best (and most defiantly) on “Miss World” when she announced in that “fuck you” lilt, “I’ve made my bed I’ll lie in it/I’ve made my bed, I’ll die in it.” And now adding to the “bed-making” metaphor scene, as it applies to the “leave me alone” musical canon, is HAIM. Who is also here to reassure those who have felt like Miranda or Carrie in the “Bay of Married Pigs” episode, “You think you’re gonna die, but you’re not gonna die.”

And with Danielle co-producing the alternating-tempo’d track with Rotsam and Buddy Ross, “Everybody’s Trying to Figure Me Out” really does mirror the ups and downs of one’s anxious mood. The briefly upbeat moments in between panic attacks and the bursts of confidence between total self-loathing. So it is that the song starts out with a more country vibe before bursting into a Sheryl Crow-circa-Tuesday Night Music Club sound around the one-minute mark. And it’s really as the song comes to it’s reassuring close (the “you think you’re gonna die, but you’re not gonna die” promise) that HAIM convinces their listener that people can try to figure you out all they want. But 1) they’re never gonna and 2) who you are ain’t nobody’s business but your own (despite what the government might believe).