The question of loyalty makes Naomi wonder for the first time about Harlow’s family in all of this. Realizing she hasn’t seen any comment from them on her arrest, she quickly googles “Harlow Hayes family” to see what comes up.
Motherfuckers, she whispers, seeing theAvantexclusive.
AVANT
CELEBRITY NEWS
“She Completely Cut Us Off, We Don’t Even Know Who She Is Anymore,” Says Harlow Hayes’ Aunt
BY REBECCA PEEL – SEPTEMBER 26, 2024
With the recent allegations against pop star Harlow Hayes, we reached out to her family to get their thoughts on the matter. And to our surprise, they weren’t defending her innocence, instead opening up about how she cruelly cut them out of her life years ago.
An only child, Harlow Hayes (born Harlow McHayton) hails from a small town in southeast Ohio. Her parents, James and Michelle McHayton, doted on her, even moving to New York when Harlow was sixteen so she could pursue her dreams.
“From such a young age she was so talented,” says her Aunt Jocelyn. “We always knew she’d be a star. Her mother, my sister, gave up her life so Harlow could make it. And for years, they were so close. You’ve seen her acceptance speeches where Harlow would profusely thank them for her support… but then, out of nowhere, a few years back, she became distant. Stopped answering our calls, refusing to see us. And then she started releasing music with satanic references and the like. Just awful.
“I always told Michelle this would happen when she chose pop over country. Country stars don’t go down those dark roads like stars do in Hollywood or New York. They’re good Christian people.
“So I hate to say it, but when I saw the news that she’d been arrested, I wasn’t that shocked. Just heartbroken at what had become of my niece.”
Chapter 11
Interest piqued by the article, Naomi falls back down the Harlow Hayes rabbit hole, moving from tabloids and gossip columns to YouTube videos as she tries to better understand the mysterious pop star.
The various concert clips from Harlow’sRed, White, & Bluetour remind Naomi how incredible a performer Harlow is. Naomi is captivated by her ability to command a stage, singing effortlessly through impressive choreography or playing her guitar—sometimes both.
Naomi’s favorite moment is when Harlow comes on stage without any backup dancers or fancy sets. She just walks out with nothing but her guitar and a microphone. She doesn’t rush the moment. Takes in the cheers and shouts from all of the fans in the arena. The camera pans away from Harlow to all the tear-stricken faces, before panning even further out to show an aerial view of a dark dome filled with thousands of twinkling lights. As Naomi watches from this angle, she can’t help but think that in Harlow’s world, she isn’t the star. Her fans are—shining brightly for her.
In the clip, Harlow thanks them. Tells them what they mean to her. That they’re what make her life worth living. That they lift her up when she is down. She then asks them to shine their lights even brighter. “I see you,” she says.
Goosebumps cover Naomi’s skin, and she wonders once again if someone who seems so kindhearted and altruistic could really be a killer.
When the concert clip ends, a lyric video for “Melancholy,” a song from Harlow’s latest album,Legacy, starts automatically playing. Naomi closes her eyes as Harlow’s whispery vocals open the track.
Do you miss me like I miss you? I hope you’re not as melancholy and blue.
Her voice sends chills up Naomi’s arms. If she had been asked yesterday to tell Harlow’s voice apart from other talented pop singers like Sabrina Carpenter or Dove Cameron, she would’ve found the task impossible. But the more she listens, the more she can hear Harlow’s unique tone shining through. It’s breathy but rich, familiar yet distant. Her head voice is delicate and ethereal, while her lower register is powerful. In her earlier albums, Naomi can detect a slight country twang. Very subtle. But it’s almost completely gone by album four. That album,Apotheosis, is clearly the turning point for her. She’d taken four years to release it, although the pandemic was smack in the middle of that timeline, so it wasn’t as long as it seemed—everyone kind of lost two years then.
Harlow’s voice understandably matured over those years. Now it’s even richer, with some grit to it. Raw, in a way. She has stopped trying to belt out every note and sometimes even opts to whisper or speak the words instead, which gives the songs a sultry feel, with added layers of unsteadiness and intrigue when she builds to a belt. It’s as if she decided to stop singing by the book and to perform from the heart instead. No surprise it’s her most critically acclaimed work.
This growth is even more evident in Harlow’s music videos. It’s clear her first three albums were managed more closely by the label. The singles chosen for videos lacked substance but were catchy as hell. It was your typical pop music, with a bit of synth and bass alongside a catchy beat and corny choreography. She’d donned the classic pop star look, bejeweled and sparkling in the finest of fashions with eye-catching sets. And while Naomi enjoys watching those videos, she doesn’t connect to them nearly as much as those from Harlow’s last two albums, which some have called cinematic masterpieces. According to fans, Harlow’s later music videos also contain Easter eggs—little clues that musical artists sometimes leave that act as callbacks to previous work or hints for something yet to come. Naomi remembers reading an article that mentioned something like this, but they were mainly hints Harlow left for future song titles and track lists.
Naomi wonders what other secrets Harlow could be hiding in her work—ones that fans didn’t know to look out for before her arrest—and makes a note to look into them later.
Moving on, Naomi skims through the beginning of theHarlow Hayes, America’s Sweetheartdocumentary, keen to hear the comments and opinions of Harlow and people close to her. But instead, it’s filled with wishy-washy opinions of self-proclaimed “industry experts” who probably only met her once in their lives, if that.
Naomi laughs at the journalist who claims she would always be America’s Sweetheart.If only they had known what she’d be accused of in a few years’ time.
The host cites Hayes’ handling of the “Jax Paulson incident” as her crowning moment, when “all of America fell in love with her.” Paulson, a well-known but washed-up radio host, tweeted how Harlow was a talentless artist who didn’t deserve to be nominated for the VMA for Artist of the Year, let alone win. Many people expected her to ignore the comment, like she usually did. But when she won the award, she said, “And for all the girls out there who keep being told they’re not good enough, that they’re not worthy. This one’s for you. You are worthy. You are enough. Don’t let anyone try and tear you down. Thank you!”
“And I thought that was really inspiring,” the journalist says in the documentary. “It was a really classy thing to do. After that day, her fanbase kind of blew up.”
Naomi bites her lip, remembering the incident. She also recalls how that radio host got fired a few years later, some scandal about call girls or something. She covered it for C*Leb.
Maybe Harlow didn’t just forgive and forget, after all.
The thought switches on a lightbulb in Naomi’s head. She opens an Excel spreadsheet, titling the tab “Evidence” and the first column “Harlow Doesn’t Forgive & Forget.”
