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Harness Your Hopes
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Wikipedia article
{{Infobox song
| name = Harness Your Hopes
| type = song
| artist = Pavement
| EP = Spit on a Stranger
| released = June 22, 1999
| recorded = 1996
| genre =
| length =
| label = Matador
| writer = Stephen Malkmus
| producer =
| misc =
}}
'"Harness Your Hopes"' is a song by American rock band Pavement. It was originally recorded for the band's fourth studio album 'Brighten The Corners', but was ultimately left off the final record by Stephen Malkmus. It later appeared on the CD version of the "Spit on a Stranger" EP in 1999, and on the 2008 expanded reissue of 'Brighten The Corners,' the 'Nicene Creedence Edition.'
In 2017, the song became Pavement's most streamed song on Spotify, surpassing their previous hit "Cut Your Hair", and also became viral on social media app TikTok in 2020. A music video for the song was also released in March 2022 in anticipation for the reissue of the 'Spit on a Stranger' EP.
Background
"Harness Your Hopes" was originally written by Stephen Malkmus. While Malkmus liked the song, he left the song off of the album "for no good reason", which was because he thought the song sounded wrong after the band spliced the song to shorten a waltz section that came after the song's chorus, which the band did not tell him about. He then decided to turn it into a B-side.
Belated success
The song, having previously never been on the band's top five songs on Spotify, suddenly became Pavement's most streamed song on Spotify in 2017. While the exact causes of the song's popularity are unknown, it has been suggested it was due to a change in Spotify's algorithm. It also became viral on TikTok, in 2020, with people dancing to the song.
"Harness Your Hopes" currently has over 75 million streams on Spotify as of June 2022.
Music video
A music video for the song, directed by Alex Ross Perry and starring 'Yellowjackets' actor Sophie Thatcher was released on March 10, 2022, to promote the upcoming re-release of the 'Spit on a Stranger' EP. The video, directly inspired by the 1992 Peter Hyams film 'Stay Tuned', pays homage to Pavement's old music video's with Sophie Thatcher moving through projections of the band's videos. Alex directly received access to the band's music videos from Matador, and used/edited various shots to allow Thatcher to be a part of the videos; however, this was difficult due to varying footage quality, and as the scenery and lighting had to be painstakingly replicated to pull off the idea.
References
Category:Pavement (band) songs
Category:1996 songs
Category:Songs written by Stephen Malkmus
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