Giorgio Moroder Knows Exactly What He’s Doing

2013 was their year. HAIM—Danielle, Alana, and Este, three sisters from the San Fernando Valley—put out their debut album Days Are Gone and somehow managed to sound simultaneously like a memory and a discovery. The Rumours-era Fleetwood Mac influence is obvious and unapologetic, but there’s also Destiny’s Child in there, and late-period Shania Twain, and something that doesn’t have a clean reference point at all. Plenty of bands go retro. HAIM just went home.

Giorgio Moroder coming along to remix Forever is almost too logical. Moroder built the mechanical heart of disco—produced Donna Summer’s most important records, wrote Blondie’s Call Me, scored Midnight Express, collaborated with Daft Punk—and spent decades proving that electronic music doesn’t have to choose between warmth and precision. He’s the godfather of exactly the kind of sound HAIM is channeling, even if they arrived there through entirely different routes.

What he does to Forever is surgical and generous at the same time. The sequencer drops in and the track spreads out, that mechanical pulse somehow making it more spacious rather than more rigid. HAIM’s vocals float over it like they always float over everything—like they belong there, like they’ve always been there, like you’re the one who arrived late.

There’s a version of this I’d play at the end of a long Friday night, lights half-down, no one deciding anything yet. Some music just lands and stays. This is that.