So that was when the teen pivoted to the world of pop music, which she savvily paved the way for by joining the cast of Pitch Perfect 2, finally another box office hit for the still-a-teen star. A few months later, in August 2015, Steinfeld’s debut single, “Love Myself,” came out, followed by her sorta-self-titled EP Haiz that November.
“‘Haiz’ is something that my fans started calling me for a while,” she told RS, characterizing her sound as “edgy pop.” “I felt as though if I titled it Haiz, it would kind of make it feel like they had named it, in a way.” Steinfeld said that she had always loved singing and entertaining, acting being just another way to entertain, and that PP2 proved the perfect vehicle to take her into the music world.
Once she was in the studio, she recalled, “I found it very hard to make it like it was a character that I was playing, because for the first time I felt like I wasn’t and that it was me. Once I was able to let that guard down of feeling like I had to play some kind of character, I was able to really go in there as myself and have fun and let my voice come through. One of my favorite parts of this whole experience is putting my own words and my own voice into what I can call my own project.”
