Nick Hakim returned today with a new single called "Happen," which features Alex G on piano and Abe Rounds on drums. The track announces his new album Cometa, which is out October 21 and which follows his 2020 LP Will This Make Me Good as well as the 2021 collaborative project Small Things that he worked on with composer Roy Nathanson. “The key is to find that extremity of love for yourself,” Hakim said in relation to the album. “It’s about growing into someone you want to be; it’s about finding pure love within yourself when the world around us seems to be crumbling.”
"Happen" is a meditative slow-burn. "The sweetest angel fell into my world," Hakim sings in a hushed tone in the opening line. Throughout the song he reflects on how this newfound love has brought him purpose and joy. On "Happen," Hakim lives in the small moments—the sun grazing his lover's skin—and is present for the love he's been graced with.
The single comes with a Johan Carlsson–directed visual that was shot in Sweden at Roy Andersson's Studio 24, where Andersson's acclaimed existential comedies A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting Existence, You, the Living, and Songs From the Second Floor were made. The video captures people on a subway car, living small moments in close vicinity of strangers.
"The idea for the video is very simple: We see people on a subway, all busy with their different lives, some are in great spirits and some in deep thoughts, maybe because of trouble at work or in their personal life," Carlsson said of the Andersson-esque video. "Sometimes when you’re in a public space you’re not interested in your fellow human beings at all, and sometimes looking at them is so interesting that you can’t stop."
Watch it below.
