If you’re anything like me, then you get excited when your friends introduce you to a new musician that you like. Then, when you learn that said musician is a woman, you are stoked. When you dig a little deeper and learn that said woman is an openly bisexual, biracial, bipolar, intersectional feminist, you begin to question if this is real life or just some extremely vivid fever dream. This is more or less the series of reactions I experienced when I was recently introduced to the up-and-coming alternative/pop artist, Halsey.
A 20-year-old native of New Jersey, Halsey (also known as Ashley Frangipane) has been sharing her music since she was fourteen years old, doing acoustic guitar covers on her YouTube channel (sadly now taken down). As the years passed her name became more well known. She opened for bigger bands on tour such as The Weekend and Imagine Dragons, and in April of 2015 she released her first EP, entitled Room 93. Her most recent release, however, is what has been getting her even more attention. On August 28 Halsey’s first full-length album, Badlands came out.
It’s no secret that I love this album. It’s sometimes dark, sometimes uplifting and sweet. There’s one thing that I always look for when listening to new albums: Does it say something? Any musician can make a series of songs that sounds good together, but do they tell you something about the artist or something bigger than that? Badlands passes this test with flying colors.
Halsey’s Instagram bio reads, “I write songs about sex and being sad.” While this is true, her music goes so far beyond that. Each song is filled with an honesty and realism that took me by surprise. In her song “Strange Love,” she shamelessly, aggressively even, confronts issues of privacy invasion and the less glamorous side of being thrust into the limelight. The opening track of the album, “Castle,” tackles the same issue, with the opening lines saying, “Sick of all these people talking, sick of all this noise / Tired of all these cameras flashing, sick of being poised.” But, like the artist, this is a multi-faceted album that goes beyond one or two impactful messages. In songs like “Haunting” and “Colors,” Halsey sings about the painful sides of failing or failed relationships. “New Americana” and “Gasoline” bring up drug use and problems with addiction, escapism, and losing yourself.
If you were to ask me to provide some criticism for Badlands, I’m afraid my answer would disappoint you. The biggest problem I have with the album is that it isn’t longer, because I could listen to it for hours. It’s the perfect balance of gritty, hard songs to listen to when you want the music to take you away and the ones that are more fun to blast on long car rides.
My favorite thing about Badlands, you might ask? How unapologetic and unforgiving it is. In the music industry, it’s easy for men to be unapologetic about their relationships, their sex life, their aggressive tendencies, et cetera. Women who have that same attitude come under quite a bit of heat (see this article about Beyoncé and this one about Nicki Minaj). Halsey sums up her opinions on the issue pretty well in one of the last songs on the album, “Control”: “You should be scared of me / Who is in control?” What it boils down to is that Halsey has taken all of the parts of her that could have held her back—her gender, her sexuality, her race, her disability—embraced them, and created a powerful album that shows every side of her without discretion. For a first album, that’s quite an achievement, and I can’t wait to see what she’ll do next to top it.
Long story short, everyone should listen to Badlands by Halsey and fall in love with it like I did.
Image Credit: Stereo Gum, Complex