Wrong Direction by Hailee Steinfeld Song Info
“Wrong Direction” is the first single from Hailee Steinfeld’s EP "Half Written Story". In the regretful ballad, Hailee calls out an ex-lover after realizing their relationship wasn’t as perfect as she expected it to be. Upon the reveal of the track’s title on December 29, 2019 via multiple social media posts, fans quickly connected the title to former beau Niall Horan, who made his music debut in boyband One Direction before he pursued a solo career in 2016. The pair dated for around a year before splitting in December 2018, a full year before “Wrong Direction” was released. Hailee is yet to confirm or deny the connection. The track was first previewed by ultrasubversive, a frequent source of pop music information on Twitter, on December 27, 2019. The source revealed the song’s title, release date, and a snippet the track’s chorus. A music video for the track was premiered on January 8, 2020. "'I’ve learned how easy it is to fall in love with the idea of falling in love, and more importantly, how hard it can be to accept the reality of losing yourself in someone else’s version of the word. I wrote this song at a low point in my life, when I realized I had spent over a year falling in a direction so far from who I was.'" –Hailee Steinfeld via Apple Music "'I love this song so much because I feel like I actually wrote the song that sounds like how I felt. It was as easy to write as it was difficult. I knew what I wanted to say, but saying it felt weird and it was hard. It was a very strange session. I found myself pacing around a lot and having to leave the room and come back. And again, I think it was me not wanting to accept the reality of my truth. But I was in a room with amazing people who I love—and who by that point I had spent a lot of time with—and they kept me on track and brought out the best of me in that moment. It’s crazy—I put this song out on New Year’s and didn’t perform it until months later on a late-night show. You’d think enough time had gone by that I wouldn’t be as affected, but performing it, I felt like the wind got knocked out of me. I’d never had a moment like that before. Singing it there, for the first time, it felt like my whole heart was in the middle of the room.'" – Hailee Steinfeld via Apple Music
