Interviewing Haiden Henderson: Unveiling the Artist Behind the Music
Written by: Keyali Mikaela
In this exclusive interview with rising pop-rock sensation Haiden Henderson, we delve deep into the inspiration behind his latest single "Hell of a Good Time," explore the electrifying energy of his live performances, and discuss his evolution as an artist from Haiden to Haiden Henderson. With candid insights into his creative process, navigating the challenges of fame in the age of social media, and his ambitious plans for the future, Haiden offers a glimpse into the mind of a true musical innovator. Join us as we uncover the story behind the music and get to know the artist behind the name.
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Next Wave: Starting off, you just released your latest single “hell of a good time”. What inspired the song and the unique blend of pop and rock elements?
Haiden Henderson: There were multiple things that inspired “hell of a good time”. One was the actual person that I was wanting to talk about. I have a history of falling for people that I shouldn't, just like everybody in their late teens and early 20s. I wanted to kind of capture the side of me that doesn't dislike that part of myself, which the entire ‘Choke On My Heart’ EP is about me hating myself for that side of myself, but instead this is just me being the actual simp that I am for these terrible people.
And so I wanted to write about this person that would likely send me to therapy, I just wanted to build a world around her. Then I wanted to combine that with the energy that I had experienced the night before, the hell of a good time session, at a rock concert that I went to. I went to see some people, who are now my friends, play live and they had an insanely cool set. I'm really just a pop girlie through and through. I love pop music, but I play guitar and I have distortion on things, so people say that I also make kind of rock/alternative stuff. I was honestly just jealous of their opening song because they went so hard. I was like, I want the show starter song, I want the thing that sets the tone for the rest of the night. So I came in with those two things and we went from there.
Next Wave: It definitely gives off the opener to a huge rock/pop show kind of vibe.
Haiden: That's cool. I mean, now I'm realizing that, because it's my most successful release today, it'll have to likely go at the end of the show. And I'm like, fuck it, no. That was not my intention. Now I'm gonna have to top it so that I can start the set with hell of a good time and then end it with something crazier.
Next Wave: You could always just play it twice, throw everyone for a loop.
Haiden: Yeah, actually, dude. I just pull a Travis Scott and play it nine times. Just keep going.
Next Wave: You recently headlined your first couple of shows at Moroccan lounge and Baby’s All Right in LA and New York. How was that for you and how do you feel that it reflects your current growth as an artist?
Haiden: Playing live is like the only thing that makes you feel anything in music, because music is technically an intangible. So you're constantly working really, really hard and sort of killing yourself over the idea of something as opposed to an actual thing. Shows are the first place where that experience becomes tangible for the first time. So it was my first time meeting my fans directly, because I've only ever opened for other artists. Being my first headline shows meant that I was connecting names with, you know, Tiktok or Instagram usernames with their faces and stuff. So having girls like, cry and reach out to grab me on stage, that classic pop experience that I grew up watching, was really, really crazy to experience within the context of what I do. I felt very wildly undeserving at the end of it, to be honest, but there was a high that I want to recreate as often as possible.
Next Wave: Do you have any plans to do any more live shows in the future?
Haiden: I actually have one in two days. I'm opening for my best friend, Emei, at El Rey in LA and then in New York at Gramercy theater. They're both sold out, and they will be bigger rooms– like 800-900 cap rooms. She's my best friend and she actually lives literally down the street from me.So yeah, we're doing shows together and they're going to be super, super fun. And then I'm just going to keep playing as much as people will allow them to.
Next Wave: It would be great to see you live.
Haiden: It's really fun. I think that's the part of what I do that I'm most proud of, because all of my songs were written on a guitar, typically, in my bedroom. So they survive and perform best live. Even if something goes viral on the internet or something, it wasn't ever really intended to stay there. And in my world, it was always meant to be played for people.
Next Wave: Earlier you described yourself as a pop girl, I can definitely relate to that. You've also described yourself as a one man boy band, what does that mean to you and how does it influence your approach to creating music and performing?
Haiden: I said one man boy band sort of ironically during a session one time when we were writing something. I was just like, this is the kind of song that I feel like I would have heard on the radio growing up from the backseat of my mom's car. I said that I sound like a one man boy band and was like, that kind of has a ring to it and sums up what I think I sell best as an artist. It's not the N’sync type of boyband, it's more like the ones that hold guitars and stuff. Which I would equate to like 5 Seconds of Summer, One Direction and the Jonas Brothers. That's like, nostalgic feeling, because I've always had very nostalgic feeling melodies. For some reason my ear always goes to the type of melodies that you feel like you've heard before, out of habit. So I'm just gonna continue to hammer that idea home. And I'm hoping that the little kitschy phrase that I just ironically threw out there, one day will attach to itself in some way.
Next Wave: I noticed you covered songs like Burnin 'Up by the Jonas Brothers and Sparks by Coldplay at your headline shows. How do you choose which songs to cover? And what do you enjoy most about being able to put your own spin on those songs?
Haiden: I feel like covers are always kind of a novelty thing. It's like when I hear an artist do a cover I either want them to do their own interpretation of it or I want them to just have some fun with it and make it this sing along experience. My cover of Burnin 'Up is purely to just get people going; it's like the third or fourth song in the set, and so it's meant to just break down all the walls and get everybody in the room screaming and dancing. It's typically easier to do that for a song that you grew up listening to than it is for an artist that you recently found.
On TikTok I got kind of known for acoustically playing songs while talking to the audience, then seamlessly going back into the song and tricking people into listening to my music. With Burnin Up and then some of the other covers I do, I stop the song at some random point with the whole band, and then I'd say something witty like a punchline type thing, then we'll just go back into it. So, I choose covers based on whether or not I can mess around with it and also whether or not I can melt them into one of my own songs and just wrap them up into a world. And I just have to be a fan of whatever the song is.
Next Wave: Sorry To Your Next Ex has become one of your biggest songs. What inspired the song and why do you think it resonates so strongly with listeners?
Haiden: That one, that I feel like the music video kind of adds a different perspective on the song. The song is very confident, and it's saying I feel bad for the next person that you're with, because they'll never be as good as me, essentially. In the music video, I’m singing the song while sitting on the front lawn of the house that I just got kicked out of, surrounded by my belongings. It provides this different point of view on it, which I think is much more similar to the place that I wrote it from. I'm never really as confident as songs like Sorry To Your Next Ex or Pretty Little Addict make me sound. It's like me hyping myself up, you know, in my bedroom alone on a guitar. I'm trying to get myself to be confident, and I think it's probably for that reason that the song resonated with people. Now the new stuff is like feeling almost a little bit sexier. It has a little bit of a swag to it that the old stuff didn’t, and it's purely because I'm actually more confident with myself and my writing than I used to be.
Next Wave: I'm curious, when you write songs that are about specific people do they ever find out and do they ever come to you about the songs that you've written?
Haiden: Oh, yeah, dude, it's fucking messy. It's so messy. I'm not a baseline creative person in the way that I can't just sit down and spew out songs. I can't write things that aren't purely factual because I'm just not creative enough. So every painful detail is so true and I have had many past partners reach out. Past partners will go through and only like posts on my Instagram or TikTok, that are about the song that is very clearly about them. I'm usually pretty good at navigating, like, “No, that's not actually how I feel, I'm just playing it up for the bang”. Which is true, I'm not usually as angry as you know, Pretty Little Addict makes me sound. Though, you know at a time I might have been. So it's messy, but for the art. For the art, baby, that's what we do.
Next Wave: You recently started going by Haiden Henderson as opposed to just Haiden. You explained that it represents your evolution as an artist, being more confident in where you are now. Can you elaborate a little bit more on that transition and elaborate more on how it reflects on your growth?
Haiden: Yeah, the plan for me was always to end up at Haiden Henderson, but I wanted to start as Haiden for a couple reasons. One, I went viral so early on. I went viral for like, the 15th song that I ever wrote, so I felt very sucked into this world and didn't exactly know what I was doing. I was an aerospace engineer major at USC, and I was interning at SpaceX. I had a completely alternative life path that I was pursuing, so I knew it was gonna take me a second to figure out who I was, what kind of songs felt the most authentic to me and all that. Writing as Haiden felt like the first step of that. I just wanted to be the TikTok kid, the boy next door, the new kid on the block, just Haiden, one name. It's kitschy, it's young. Then when I found the thing that I think I do well and wanted to start the full structure of my career, I just wanted to tack on my last name, which is Henderson. It's a pretty simple thing that I've always wanted to do and I feel like I finally found the thing that I do well, so this is my way of telling everybody.
Next Wave: And so as an artist who's constantly evolving, what are some key lessons that you've learned along your journey and how they shaped your approach to your craft?
Haiden: I think the biggest thing that I always come back to is having a certain amount of tunnel vision, I think, specifically in LA, or New York, or just the major music cities. You can get really wrapped up in what other people around you are doing and you can start doubting what you do and what you do well. I'm fortunate enough to only do very specific things very well, or do very specific things even sort of well. I have to be playing a guitar or I have to be guitar based, at least right now with where I'm at, and my songs have to live in that world. That's what I do well, and I think in the past I've gotten a little bit too wrapped up in what my peers might think is cool or artistic, which I have lost the purity of my intention through that. So I'm a big tunnel vision person, I have like two close friends, I work with the same two co writers and collaborators. I work with the same music video director, the same photographers. I have a very, very tight knit community and I don't do the speed dating stuff that people do in LA, which is writing with a new person every single day, purely because I'm not very good at it. I
Next Wave: Being able to kind of have that tunnel vision and being able to have a little bit more of a musical variety like you do is very impressive.
Haiden: Thank you. It kind of applies to everybody, like if you're a high school student, or a college student or anything, it's so easy to get wrapped up in what other people might think of you. I've lived 90% of my life for other people up until pretty recently. I also think going from Haiden to Haiden Henderson was me figuring out how to and wanting to live my life for myself. I was always a reflection of other people's characteristics and personality quirks because I moved around a lot as a kid and I just wanted to be liked. After a while I'm just like fuck being liked, I don't even know who I am. I needed to figure that out. Just do you and focus on that because you're going to look back someday and realize that you weren't you and you're going to really wish that you had been.
Next Wave: So let's see. What is the most unexpected place or situation where you found inspiration for your son?
Haiden: I always tell the same story. Is there any other story? I have one that I always tell that’s very bizarre. I guess I'm gonna have to write that one out. I apologize if you've heard of the story before, but the song Choke On My Heart came about from a very unorthodox place. One of my frequent collaborators, who I wrote “hell have a good time” with, is Lauren Christy. She's a great songwriter. She had a little chihuahua named Belle and I was over at her house for dinner one night, and Bella was walking around the house. She sounded like a Chihuahua Darth Vader. She had a really hard time breathing, so she constantly sounded like she was on the brink of death and I was freaked out. I was like, what the fuck is going on here, and Lauren said that she had a medical condition where her heart was swollen. It was too big for her body and it was pushing on her trachea so it made it hard for her to breathe. I was like, oh, so she's choking on her heart. That's actually quite poetic. So I wrote the song Choke On My Heart based off of that, within that week. I played it for Lauren, she was blown away and thought it was beautiful. Belle ended up passing away after, so I also named the EP Choke On My Heart because I just feel like it encapsulated what I was trying to get across with the whole project. So now I have a song and a banger project dedicated to a since passed little white Chihuahua named Belle.
Next Wave: Looking ahead, what are your goals and aspirations as an artist, including any upcoming project? I know you mentioned some shows that you're excited for?
Haiden: My goal this year in 2024 is to release music more consistently than I've ever released before. I've always written songs alone in my bedroom on an acoustic guitar, and can only do it so quickly. I would write a thing, put it on the internet, and then people on the internet would really want it. Then I would freak out and not even have it written fully, wouldn't have produced anything. I would just be like, oh, fuck, okay, and then I would rush and try to finish it, then release it. Then the very next song, the same thing would happen. So I was always releasing from a very defensive position. Last year, I didn't release for a little bit because I was in the midst of signing a record deal, which takes a long time. During that time, I built up a whole catalog of songs, started collaborating with people and letting other people in on the process. So now I just have more songs than I've ever had, and this year will be the year of me consistently releasing one song every month, basically, for the entire year. So people can expect like another 10 songs out of me this year, which will be the most I've ever dropped in a year by far because I also dropped the Choke On My Heart EP at the top of this year.
Next Wave: Any plans on releasing another full length project, like another EP or an album anytime in the near future?
Haiden: There could even be multiple more this year. There's a lot of music. So yeah, definitely gonna be another project this year, and potentially even two.
Next Wave: You brought up social media quite a bit throughout the interview, especially it playing such a big role in connecting with your fans and promoting your music. How do you navigate the challenges of maintaining an authentic presence while also trying to manage the pressure of being so visible online?
Haiden: I don't think I navigate it very well. I don't think anybody does. It's a time warp perspective, the whole internet is a weird place. And now it seems that it's weird because now when I leave the house, people know who I am, and like, recognize me. Or they'll think that I'm Pete Davidson or something, and now it's starting to spill into my daily life, which is really cool. I think I've gotten better at being authentic on the internet. These last six months or so, I was being very performative, because I wasn't very comfortable being who I am and I didn't feel like people would like who I was. It was through writing the Choke On My Heart EP and writing songs like, “you don't even like me” that really shed light on that for other people. I've gotten a lot better at just enjoying what I do on the internet more and making it less of a job, because it used to be pretty grueling.
My work life balance, though, is absolutely horrible. I don't stop working. Right before this, I was editing the artwork for the next single. When I get off of this, I'm gonna finish editing, post a video on every platform. I'm pretty bad at it. But I do now, enjoy it more than I've ever enjoyed it, which is good. I'm sure if you asked me in a few months, I'll hate it again. This is how it goes up and
Next Wave: Last question. If you could collaborate with any artist past or present, who would it be and why? And what do you think that the collaboration would bring to your music?
Haiden: I was talking about this with a friend last night, I was specifically talking about who I would want to get dinner with, if any dead musician that I would want to get dinner with. And I sort of landed, I landed on Elvis. I mean, the guy's got a lot of problems, and I think that that's really fascinating. He was the first global celebrity and he took the brunt of that. He didn't get there by the most just of means, and he ended up with addiction, like a whole plethora of really terrible things. But like, at the same time, I don't know who wouldn’t have given the crazy amount of eyes on him for the first time in human history, really, since like Jesus. And so he would be a really interesting person to get dinner with as a collaborator. I can't imagine I would want to work with him much.
This is a tough question. I think I would want to work with a living musician that I look up to, and it would probably be Alex Turner, lead singer of Arctic Monkeys. I think it would be a really fascinating writing session. And then even if we don't end up writing a song, like just sitting with him at a bar would also just be really fun. Prince would be really, really sick. I don't know, I'm not even answering the question. I’m just doing shit.