H.E.R. delivers a tale of romance and success in "Hard Place"

When I first sat down to watch the music video for Hard Place, YouTube asked me “Do you want more of H.E.R?” and the answer is always a resounding yes. Of course, that was just their way of asking me to subscribe to a Vevo channel, but it’s a remarkably effective one.

Gabi Wilson, better known as singer-songwriter H.E.R., has been gracing my Spotify playlists since 2017. Her collaboration with Daniel Caesar, Best Part, is the platinum single through which I fell in love with her raspy, soothing vocals and R&B style. Rarely seen without her favourite accessory, her sunglasses, she specifically chose to go by H.E.R. in order to avoiding constructing a career based on her looks. She always wanted it to be about the music, which is what got her not one, but two Grammy Awards earlier this year.

Hard Place is the kind of song you listen to on your commute, looking wistfully outside your window and pretending to be in a very sad music video. I’ve mentioned that H.E.R. is rarely seen without a pair of sunnies, but she ditched the shades for this vulnerable video. It tells us the story of a couple of musicians in which one of them is given the chance to advance in their career without the other. However, they start resenting each other along the way and she is caught between his love and a hard place. The passionate track is part of her 2018 project, I Used to Know Her: Part 2.

H.E.R. is part of a movement to take us back to what matters most in music and forget how the industry works for a bit. To me, that is emotion, which every track of hers is dripping with. She is the voice of us, poor hopeless romantics in the height of hookup culture, and man, is that voice a good one. So whenever anyone asks me if I want more of H.E.R., the answer is always yes, yes, yes.