Hailee Steinfeld

Sure, Hailee Steinfeld had a bit of an advantage over other aspiring singers when she dropped her debut EP, Haiz, in 2015 at the age of 18. For one, the Los Angeles native (born in 1996) was already a big deal in Hollywood thanks to her breakout role in the Coen brothers’ reboot of True Grit. And when it came time to court the music industry with her plaintive but powerful singing voice, Steinfeld had a pretty slick audition tape in the form of Pitch Perfect 2, the hit musical comedy that landed her a record contract. But if Steinfeld’s calling-card single, “Love Myself”, positioned her as a motivational dance-pop preacher in the Katy Perry mould, her musical pursuits since then have amounted to something far greater and more unpredictable than a movie-star vanity project. As she’s done throughout her eclectic acting career, Steinfeld the singer has savvily adapted to myriad settings, subjecting her voice to Zedd and GREY’s pitch-shifting future bass on their Top 10 collaboration, “Starving”, and inviting Florida Georgia Line to bring some country flavour to the Alesso-produced beachside bop “Let Me Go”. And with her breezy 2020 single “I Love You’s”, she washes away the post-breakup blues with a dreamy sample of Annie Lennox’s iconic “No More ‘I Love You’s’”. As Steinfeld told Apple Music, “I love that this record resonates with different generations because of that”—spoken like a seasoned singer eager to make the leap from teen pop queen to adult-contemporary divadom.