HAPPEN

By By Emmanuel Mensah

With “Happen,” the first single from his upcoming album "Cometa," Nick Hakim steps away from the dense, psychedelic textures that defined his earlier work and into a sound marked by restraint, intimacy, and raw emotional depth. Featuring the subtle touch of Alex G on piano, the track ushers in a new era for the Brooklyn-based artist, one where simplicity becomes the vessel for deeper vulnerability. While love has long been a central theme in Hakim’s discography, “Happen” reframes it not as ecstatic infatuation but as a quiet, uncertain presence haunting in its stillness and honesty. On earlier projects like Green Twins and Will this make me good, Hakim leaned into genre-bending fusion, weaving together elements of soul, R&B, and Chilean folk with woozy production and psychedelic flourishes. His sound was often maximalist and impressionistic, filled with shifting textures and vocal acrobatics that blurred the line between pain and pleasure. In contrast, “Happen” strips away that sonic haze.

Gone are the swirling effects and explosive falsetto; in their place is a subdued, almost skeletal arrangement that allows each breath and note to linger in the air. Alex G’s presence is felt in the lo-fi melancholy of the piano, which floats gently beneath Hakim’s voice like a forgotten lullaby. This musical minimalism enhances the emotional clarity of the track. Hakim sings not to impress, but to confess. His smoky, unadorned vocals carry the weight of someone processing feelings in real time, caught between desire and doubt. The song’s sparse instrumentation, built around Alex G’s delicate piano line, creates space for that vulnerability to resonate. It’s slowcore meets bedroom folk, evoking the intimacy of artists like Elliott Smith or Grouper, while still retaining Hakim’s unmistakable sense of soul. The result is haunting but never heavy-handed, emotionally resonant without relying on melodrama.

The visual accompaniment to “Happen” further deepens the song’s introspective mood. Set in a subway car, the video drifts from face to face, capturing the quiet solitude of urban life, a communal isolation shared by everyone aboard. When the camera finally lands on Hakim, sitting alone at the back with a freshly shaved head and face, the image feels almost symbolic. It’s not just a new look, it’s a reintroduction, a shedding of past selves. The city’s rhythmic movement mirrors the song’s pacing: slow, contemplative, tinged with melancholy, yet still inching forward. There’s beauty in the stillness, and in Hakim’s world, that stillness speaks volumes. “Happen” marks a mature and quietly daring pivot for Nick Hakim. While it retains the emotional richness of his past work, it does so with a newfound subtlety and confidence. By choosing not to fill every moment with sound, Hakim invites listeners to sit with silence, to lean into discomfort, and to find meaning in the spaces between. With Alex G’s understated piano grounding the track, “Happen” becomes more than just a song; it’s a moment of reflection, a fragile truth captured in real time. If this single is any indication, "Cometa" promises to be Hakim’s most emotionally resonant and sonically restrained work to date, a testament to the power of quiet transformation.