About this song
- “Man from the Magazine” concerns how female artists are asked questions by journalists that male artists would never get, beginning with a true story from Este Haim about getting asked whether she makes her bass-playing faces in bed. The song draws clear inspiration from Joni Mitchell, such as her song “Coyote” off of Hejira. Danielle Haim described how Mitchell was an influence on the sisters in an interview about the album. "When we were first coming out, I guess it was perplexing for some people that I would make faces when I played, even though men have been doing it for years. When they see men do it, they are just, to quote HAIM, ‘in it.’ But of course, when a woman does it, it’s unsettling and off-putting and could be misconstrued as something else. We got asked questions about it early on, and there was this one interviewer who asked if I made the faces I made onstage in bed. Obviously he wasn’t asking about when I’m in bed yawning. My defense mechanism when stuff like that happens is just to try to make a joke out of it. So I kind of just threw it back at him and said, ‘Well, there’s only one way to find out.’ And of course, there was a chuckle and then we moved on. Now, had someone said that to me, I probably would’ve punched them in the face. But as women, we’re taught kind of just to always be pleasant and be polite. And I think that was my way of being polite and nice. Thank god things are changing a bit. We’ve been talking about shit like this forever, but I think now, finally, people are able to listen more intently." - Este Haim via Apple . User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply. — lastfm
