Lost Track
by Haim

Album: released as a single (2022)
Play Video

Songfacts®:

  • Inspired by a scene in John O'Hara's 1934 novel Appointment in Samarra, Haim wrote this song about feeling they've "lost track" of living a fulfilled life.
  • The song originated with one line:

    I'll never get back what I lost track of

    The trio had written the lyric back in 2021 but couldn't figure out what to do with it. The breakthrough came when filmmaker and regular Haim collaborator Paul Thomas Anderson did a "director's cut" issue for W Magazine for his Licorice Pizza movie with Alana Haim on the cover (the film co-stars Alana in her acting debut). An opportunity came to do some music during the photo shoot and Anderson mentioned Appointment in Samarra as a possible direction.

    The sisters started ferreting around the book, and a passage set at a country club stirred them. They read how Julian English, the owner of a Cadillac dealership, threw a drink in the face of an important investor in his business, damaging his reputation with the town's Catholic community. "We were inspired by the idea of someone doing something so drastic to get out of a situation they felt uncomfortable in - just to feel something," Haim explained.

    Then Haim remembered the lyric they'd been trying to find a home for and wrote the song using it as its basis. They penned and recorded "Lost Track," then shot the accompanying visuals all within a space of a few days.

    Haim described the finished track and its video as "very collaborative" and "off the cuff."
  • The Paul Thomas Anderson-directed video is set at a stuffy 1950s country club in Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley. It finds lead vocalist Danielle Haim playing a fashionable lady sat in the audience of a charity fashion show where Este and Alana are models. Bored and ill at ease, she takes a lighter to a playing card and floral centerpiece. The sister's mother Donna and Anderson's daughter Pearl also feature in the clip.
  • The reoccurring glockenspiel-like sound is a celesta played by Buddy Ross. He is best known as Frank Ocean's music director and keyboardist.

    Other songs and classical works recorded with a celesta include:

    "The Nutcracker Suite" by Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky

    "Rhythm Of The Rain" by The Cascades

    "Cherish" by The Association

    "She's A Rainbow" by The Rolling Stones

    "Sunday Morning" by The Velvet Underground

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