Halsey on new album Manic: ‘I’ve never put out a record before where it screams ‘I am bisexual!’
American singer Halsey has never been shy about singing about her love life, but she claims her latest album is one big signpost that shouts ‘I’m bisexual’. And she’s proud of it.
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When US singer Halsey calls Alanis Morissette a lifelong hero she’s not exaggerating.
“Literally my whole life,” Halsey clarifies. “I was born in 1994. My mom was a huge fan. I grew up on her music.”
Morissette, whose breakthrough album Jagged Little Pill was released in 1995, guests on Halsey’s third album Manic on the appropriately titled Alanis Interlude (there’s also interludes featuring Dominic Fike and Suga of Korean boy band BTS, also named after them).
Halsey, born Ashley Frangipane, admitted she reached out to Morissette “on a whim”.
“She hasn’t made an album in seven years or something,” Halsey says. “She’s on this inaccessible, unattainable level of being cool and powerful. No matter how many men tried to tell her she was trying too hard or she thought she was more profound than she was, it never stopped her from speaking her truth and finding her voice.
“She detailed her life experiences in this way that didn’t romanticise them but immortalised them. I was inspired by that.”
When Morissette agreed to the collaboration there was another surprise for Halsey – the singer was heavily pregnant – her son Winter was born in August last year.
“She did this song when she was in her third trimester, which added a whole other layer to it. Not only are you on my record and you’re a total badass but you’re working in your third trimester of your pregnancy. It was amazing.”
Alanis’ Interlude may be brief but makes an impact.
Halsey has always been open about her bisexuality, but never this open.
The chorus is a more graphic and sapphic take on ‘your body is a wonderland’ (John Mayer’s voice is heard on a voicemail after the track 3AM), with lyrics about female liaisons in high school as well as Morissette singing about gender identity “he and she is her, her and he are loved and I have never felt the difference”.
“The concept was actually Alanis’s, which was really cool,” Halsey says.
“It talks about the gender binary in a way that I never have before, although I’ve teetered on that line before. It was cool to talk about it, especially with her, because of how empowered and in control of her sexuality and sexual-ness as an autonomous woman she is.”
Halsey is proud of the song’s frank lyrics.
“I’ve had to grow as an artist who is a member of the LGBTQ community, I’ve been out since I was at high school as bi, but that hasn’t always meant that I’ve been super brave about writing about it. There’s a lot of songs about women on (debut album) Badlands but a lot is gender neutral – they, we, us, our – and on my second album (Hopeless Fountain Kingdom) I took the leap forward and started writing ‘she’ pronouns in my songs and talking about falling in and out of love with women. So when I was making Manic there was this moment — I’ve never put out a record before where it screams ‘I AM BISEXUAL!’ in all caps. And this one really does. It’s more than sexuality, it’s about expression and gender as well, it felt really good to do that. And not have Alanis hold my hand through it but be there with me in this thing.”
Badlands established Halsey (whose stage name is an anagram of Ashley) reaching No. 2 in Australia and the US in 2015, however her real introduction to the mainstream came in 2016 as the vocalist (and co-writer) on the Chainsmokers’ global No. 1 Closer.
2017’s Hopeless Fountain Kingdom again peaked at No. 2 in Australia, but topped the US chart, including the hits Now Or Never and Bad At Love.
In-between albums Halsey’s audience grew via collaborations – surfacing on Benny Blanco’s Eastside with Khalid and duets with two former partners – Him & I with rapper G-Eazy and 11 Minutes with British singer Yungblud.
Halsey would write her US No. 1 hit Without Me about splitting with G-Eazy (they reunited shortly after its release, before splitting for good). Manic features not only Without Me, but several more relationship post-mortems, the subjects of which Halsey is keeping to herself.
While fans were quick to pin the country-tinged You Should Be Sad on G-Eazy, Halsey said many have missed the song’s tongue-in-cheek tone.
“Some of the songs are a little satirical. You Should Be Sad is meant to be a little melodramatic, that lyric ‘I’m so glad I never had a baby with you’ is supposed to bring the image to mind of an old cowgirl in the 1920 south of the US – the drama of that, I got to have a little fun with it that way.”
However those looking for more intel won’t need to look far – although Halsey warns fans to check their timings.
“It’s weird to be in an industry where you experience something and you don’t get to talk about it immediately in the platform. You divert to your art as a means of discussing it, which often means that it happens much later than the thing you’re actually going through.
“I always say to people if you hear me sing about it, it means that I’m over it, because it means I worked through it while I was singing about it and gathered the confidence of the catharsis to be able to release it and put it in the world.
“I always said I wouldn’t be that person who wrote about my relationships. Then the world left me with no choice, they made my relationships the focus of my brand. That was really frustrating. The past two and a half years, especially after the success of Without Me, I couldn’t catch an interview or be mentioned in an article with having a partner’s name attached to mine.
“So that was a big decision making this album, I want to talk about these things, they were absolutely life-changing events that happened to me, necessary things that led me to finding a sliver of self acceptance, which is the point of this album, self acceptance. I need to talk about what led me there to begin with, how do I do that in a way that doesn’t make the narrative to being about me?”
The album is book ended with two brutally personal songs. Ashley deliberately uses her real name, 929 uses her date of birth. The latter sees the singer “freestyle” about issues, all recorded in one take.
“I get progressively more agitated by the end of it. It’s confessional at the end, talking about my fans, my art, my ex, my desire to be loved now, drugs, mental health, my family, money, travelling – all these different things I’ve dealt with coming into my mid 20s, but I try to do it in a way where it’s OK I have all these things going on, I’m totally spilling my guts to you but I wanted to end it on a more positive, more gentle note.
“I know my fans worry about me, especially with the content I write about, I wanted them to finish the album and think ‘She’s gonna be OK’ and hopefully help them think OK well then hopefully that means we are too.”
The lyrics also touch on how important fan interaction is to Halsey – Ashley is written from the point of view of what her legacy will be and how fans will look back on what she will leave behind. She knows it’s a dark song.
“I wrote it after this really intense conversation with my manager. I’ve lost a lot of my peers over the last couple of years, some of them I was friends with, some of them I’d collaborated with, some of them I’d just idolised behind the scenes. The idea of writing an album that is so autobiographical and starting it with a song called Ashley and talking about how I’m organic matter, I’m still a human being writing these songs. Anything could happen to me.
“But also saying that no matter what happens, you’ll take these songs that I’ve left you and they’ll continue to have an impact on your life in some way. The most notable lyric is ‘Someday if I burst into flames I’ll leave you the dust’. I hope that will help you remember this journey we had together. That was very real for me, I kinda had to get that off my chest.”
At the end of December Halsey was due to headline the Victorian leg of the Falls Festival; before the event was cancelled due to fears of bushfires in the Lorne area where the festival is held.
Shortly after the festival was cancelled, Halsey announced a club show, for Falls ticket holders, with all the money going to bushfire relief.
“I was up at 8.30am, we got the news at 8.45 and by 9am we were already planning the show. It was necessary, it was a must. I didn’t want to think about the tragedy going on in the country, that was something out of my control, but knowing there were thousands of people looking forward to the concert and were devastated, that was something I could do something about. We can use this to raise money, it was a no-brainer and the show was so sick, everyone was in really great spirits, it was cool to see everyone come together.”
She’s already planning a return to Australia to showcase the Manic album tour.
“Australia really gets me. Nobody tries to put me in a box, nobody says ‘Is she’s a pop artist on pop radio, or is she an alt artist on Triple J? You let me be everything which is really refreshing and all I can ask for. The last time I played Australia it was small arenas, and there’s only one way to go after that …”
Manic is out now.