Songfacts®:

• Giveon Dezmann Evans is a Long Beach-born R&B singer and songwriter who performs mononymously as Giveon. After signing to Toronto producer Sevn Thomas' record label, Not So Fast, Giveon first gained notoriety with his baritone-crooned hook on Drake's May 2020 single "Chicago Freestyle." "Heartbreak Anniversary," taken from his debut EP Take Time, became his first Billboard Hot 100 solo hit on the February 27, 2021 chart (along with "Like I Want You," which entered the same week).
• The Take Time EP depicts the story of a relationship from finding love together to the breakup and its aftermath. This emotionally charged ballad finds Giveon still missing his ex on the first anniversary of her walking out on him. The heartbroken crooner wonders if his former lover still thinks about him, and he still hopes she might return.
• Giveon penned "Heartbreak Anniversary" with the songwriter Varren Wade (Mary J. Blige, Fifth Harmony, Ella Mai). His label boss, Sevn Thomas, produced the track with fellow Canadian Maneesh (Drake's "Sandra's Rose").
• The song's music video co-stars Samantha Logan (Olivia Baker on CW's All American, Nina Jones in Netflix's 13 Reasons Why). The clip follows the highs and lows of Giveon's relationship with his former lover, played by Logan.
• The idea for this downtempo piano ballad came to Giveon and Sevn Thomas when they and a friend stepped into a sports bar to watch a NBA playoff game. When their friend spotted a reminder of his ex-girlfriend there, exactly one year after their split, it gave Giveon and Thomas an idea for a song.
  
  Giveon and Thomas were also going through breakups, and when they got to the studio, the two began reflecting on their own heartbreak. "It was almost like a therapy session," recalled Thomas to Billboard. "We let our guard down completely with each other and just talked about real-life situations."
  
  The sessions led to the Take Time EP; this song finds Giveon drawing inspiration from how he handles a day that is the anniversary of a heartbreak.
• "Heartbreak Anniversary" topped the singles charts in Malaysia for three weeks and in Singapore for two weeks.
• "Heartbreak Anniversary" was one of the breakthrough collaborations of Maneesh's career, and it almost never happened. The producer was in Los Angeles with collaborators who weren't taking his work seriously. Frustrated, he decided to make one more call. "I was like, 'Let me call up (Sevn Thomas), I still haven't met him,'" Maneesh told Billboard. "That must have been a divine message for me to call Sevn, because we made my biggest song out of that moment."