A Synonym for Self-Love

Hayley Harris
Sep 5, 2018 · 4 min read
Chloe x Halle

Blatant and unapologetic women empowerment has been something like an alien invasion these past few years that although signals have been blatantly flared, no one was ready for. We crept in and disrupted the “order” of the world declaring our voices will no longer be restrained — a request that so swiftly needs to be accounted to make accommodations for every being on this earth.

The Kids Are Alright album is the spacecraft create by sisters Chloe x Halle, as it holds all their songs — special messages with an overarching conscious theme. The ladies have expressed their album is a conversation and concept for their present lives, being young women growing and learning and budding as adults and musicians.

Chloe x Halle’s song “Hi Lo” from their debut album The Kids Are Alright feels like an anthem for this invasion: a new self-love anthem for women. A screeching, otherworldly ear-splitting sound creeps in your ears at the beginning of the song before the beat drops which signals we as women have landed in your world ready to shake it up. As “Hi Lo” is the first full song (but second song in the film) introduced in their visual album for The Kids Are Alright, the duo first appear upside down in our view as a hand pulls their long luscious locs dragging them on the pavement; when the beat drops, once again, Chloe peers up at us in an eerie and sinister way giving the alien-like other worldly feel matching their sounds and composition of the song. The first verse reads:

When my eyes are swollen when I cry, yeah I like it yeah

When I cut this scar up on my thigh, yeah I like it yeah

When I cannot tell each day apart, yeah I like it yeah

Freckles on my face connect like stars, yeah I like it yeah

They give you these verses that don’t quite work as opposites and you’re not quite sure which the positive or negative side may be. The song and their presence link as the completion of dark and light.

I think of a siren’s song, as they lure you in with their intentional sensual feel, but paired with a goddess of song cancels out hypnotism for the will of destruction.

You may ask yourself, how do you point out the flaws of the duo, but they make it clear that no space will be given to deduct that judgement because all the space taken up is for the sake of their self-love.

Highs and lows exist as a societal construct — acknowledging the division of your flaws creates an opening for built up of insecurity while vulnerable. By dismissing the idea that flaws are two sided, Chloe x Halle cancel out this pervasive influence. Thus, highs and lows are one in the same, causing a metamorphose — shedding the skin of the flesh’s fears and inheriting a goddess’s glory of being.

Repetition is used as a tool to not only remember what you’re listening to but a tactic that is like absorbing something in your bloodstream, it sticks to you, stays in your head, until you believe it.

When using headphones to listen I hear a fuzzy break, in intro the Goldlink’s verse, kind of like a radio transmission — and I think of timely film phrase “We disrupt your regularly scheduled program with an important message.” The eerie alien sound returns by the end of his rhapsodic flow, floating around, a high frequency resounding, accompanied by what seems to be a soft melody.

Listen with intent — when Chloe x Halle enter into your ears again after Goldlink delivers his message — repeating yeah, yeah, yeah — the ship is preparing to take off. As the song fades out at the end, (with sharp annotations and flat reverberations) the ship that landed in the beginning of the song with a hard boom (when the beat dropped) has taken off and traveling far back into space, away from human’s Earth, knowing the message is received and their mission is accomplished.

Again, listen or you may miss Chloe x Halle’s ship disappear into the great unknown of the universe — as do most ships in films — I think of a quick zoom away, and quick twinkle in the sky like a star.

Although a complex synthesis, “Hi Lo,” the conversation the duo are having with us is quite simple in subject matter but complex in application to your life — this case from the central idea of loving oneself while blocking the opposing opinions of outsider, (yet they oppose the outsider role when invading Earth with truth, or a reminder for those who have forgotten what it means to have self-love). Chloe x Halle’s style of choice for the song, I’d say, they’re drowning out the negative sound, then repurposing it to convert the minds of those who thought not of the contradictions placed in front of them (highs and lows). When categories are created, division is also created. By morphing a concept into what is just easy to remember, starts to clear the confusion. Flaws are flaws, and that’s that.

And do I love them? Do we love them?

Yeah yeah yeah yeah.

My highs and lows.

Hayley Harris
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