‘Rebel Heart’: the haunting experience that inspired First Aid Kit
The presence of spirituality in our everyday lives can be a debatable hot topic – you’re either completely spun in a web of psychics, powers, and ethereal presences or firmly stood outside of it, only subscribing to the idea of mundanity and logic. However, there’s no denying that for musicians, the spiritual world is a melting point of artistic inspiration – proved true by First Aid Kit and the “haunting” experience that provided the source material for their single ‘Rebel Heart’.
Taken from the 2018 album Ruins, the story behind ‘Rebel Heart’ emerged from a retreat-style weekend trip taken by the band’s members, Swedish sisters Klara and Johanna Söderberg, to the famed Joshua Tree in California. Having rented a house in an isolated area of the site, they explained in a previous interview: “When we wrote this song, we’d been playing around with these old occult-themed board games, tarot cards and an Ouija board that was in the house. There was a storm outside. It was late at night. We could see the starry sky very clearly.”
Between the evening’s spiritual entertainment and the atmospheric weather, the sisters said they “were overcome by this haunting feeling of being only the two of us alone in a house in the middle of the desert. This was during a quite tumultuous time of heartbreak and emotional disorientation. This song came to us in the midst of all of that.”
Joshua Tree certainly holds some musical magic in its midst, having inspired sounds from not only First Aid Kit but, most famously, U2 and the American artist Gram Parsons. The latter’s connection to the area was a further source of lore for the Söderbergs, who explained the pull to the desolate desert by saying: “Joshua Tree is pretty special for us being huge Gram nerds. We’ve read all the biographies, so for us, it was Mecca.”
It’s certainly a striking far cry from any environment that the band had experienced in their homeland. “Coming from Sweden, it was also so exotic. It seemed like the farthest away from Stockholm you could get,” Johanna Söderberg later admitted.
The ethereal drama of the Joshua Tree clearly spoke to First Aid Kit in a profound way, as it played a major role in the images portrayed in the music video for ‘Rebel Heart’. They engineered a vision for a feminist cult and executed it by “[creating] a dreamy and mysterious world. It’s a homage to old 1970s horror films and the aesthetics of that era. ‘Rebel Heart’ was written in the desert after a night of experimenting with an Oujia Board and other occult-themed board games. We thought the video should reflect that.”
The band went on to confirm that: “It’s a song about identity and femininity. It’s about the destroyer we all have inside of us, that dark force that wants to take over. We wanted to only feature women in the video – the red moon represents a sense of sisterhood.”
That’s enough for even the most logical minds to be swayed towards the other side, surely? But whether you’re into the notion of spiritual guidance or not, it’s evident that the Joshua Tree has garnered its own special status as an unrivalled site of starry inspiration, not only for First Aid Kit but the myriad of souls drawn to the desolate desert both past and future.
