Hope Waidley was a college freshman at Michigan’s Grand Valley State University when she released her debut EP, Hope, back in 2017. Launched with a surprise party in her dorm, it was a humble start for an artist who in the short time since has generated more than a million streams for her song “Closure” and the song’s remix.
Busking her way across America with her sister before settling in California, Waidley had time to reflect on the motivation behind the tune.
“The song ‘Closure’ was written during a very difficult time, and it became my best friend,” she explains. “The words came as if they were a gift, and I’d sing them over and over again—it would put me at ease.”
When it came time to commit the track to video, the singer-songwriter’s Grass Lake roots jumped out.
“I suppose the idea of putting a piano out in a field attracted me because it’s unnatural but beautiful, just as finding closure in an unsettled situation could be,” she said of the dreamy clip. “I decided to jump in the pond the day of the video, hoping it would capture the drowning feeling I felt during the time I wrote the song, and then the escape that came from that. The director got on his goggles and we went for it.”
Watch “Closure” below.
