BIGSONG:
Ashley Nicolette Frangipane (IPA: /ˌfrændʒɪˈpɑːni/ FRAN-jih-PAH-nee; born September 29, 1994), known professionally as Halsey (/ˈhɔːlzi/ HAWL-zee), is an American singer. Gaining attention from self-released music on social media platforms, she[a] was signed by Astralwerks in 2014 and released her debut EP, Room 93, later that year.
Halsey released her debut studio album, Badlands, in 2015. It was certified Double Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), as were its tracks “Colors” and “Gasoline”. In 2016, she was featured on the Chainsmokers’ single “Closer”, which topped the charts in over 10 countries. Her second studio album, Hopeless Fountain Kingdom (2017), consisted of more “radio-friendly” music than her previous releases; its singles “Now or Never” and “Bad at Love” reached the top 20 of the Billboard Hot 100, with the latter peaking in the top five. Halsey’s third studio album, Manic (2020), became her best selling album worldwide, while its lead single “Without Me” became her most successful single as a lead artist. Her fourth studio album, If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power (2021), moved away from her previous sound in favor of a darker industrial sound; described by Halsey as “the album [she] always wanted to make”, it was produced by Nine Inch Nails members Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross and received generally positive reviews.
In 2020, Billboard reported that Halsey has sold over 1 million albums and received over 6 billion streams in the United States. She is noted for her distinctive singing voice. Her awards and nominations include four Billboard Music Awards, one American Music Award, one GLAAD Media Award, an MTV Video Music Award, three Grammy Awards, and being named Songwriter of the year by BMI Film & TV Awards in 2021. She was also included on Time magazine’s annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2020. Aside from music, she has been involved in suicide prevention awareness, sexual assault victim advocacy, and racial justice protests.
Early life
Ashley Nicolette Frangipane was born in Edison, New Jersey, on September 29, 1994, the daughter of Nicole and Chris Frangipane. Her parents dropped out of college after her mother discovered that she was pregnant with her. Halsey’s mother now works as an emergency medical technician (EMT), while her father manages a car dealership. Her mother is of Italian and Hungarian descent, whereas her father is mostly African-American with some distant Irish ancestry. She has two younger brothers named Sevian and Dante. Halsey played the violin, viola, and cello until moving on to the guitar when she was 14 years old. She grew up listening to Alanis Morissette, Justin Bieber, and Brand New. Throughout her childhood, her family moved frequently, as her parents worked many jobs. By the time she reached her teen years, she had enrolled in six schools.
Frangipane was bullied at school, and her suicide attempt at the age of 17 led to her being hospitalized for nearly three weeks. Following this, she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, with which her mother was also diagnosed. She began using drugs soon after, saying her bipolar disorder caused her to become an “unconventional child”. Also when she was 17, she became romantically involved with a man who was 24 and resided on Halsey Street in Brooklyn, New York, from where she took her stage name. She said, “That’s where I first start[ed] writing music and where I started to feel like I was a part of something bigger than my town in middle of nowhere New Jersey. Halsey is kind of like a manifestation of all the exaggerated parts of me, so it’s like an alter ego.” In 2012, she graduated from Warren Hills Regional High School in Washington, New Jersey.
After graduating, Frangipane enrolled in the Rhode Island School of Design, but she withdrew due to financial hardship and instead attended community college. She eventually dropped out of community college and was kicked out by her parents, whom she said “just didn’t agree with a lot of things about [her]”. Soon after, she lived in a basement in lower Manhattan with a group of “degenerate stoners” she knew through her then-boyfriend. When she was not living there, she occasionally lived in one of New York’s many homeless shelters, and she considered prostitution as a way to make money. When describing this period of her life, she has said, “I remember one time I had $9 in my bank account, and bought a four-pack of Red Bull and used it to stay up overnight over the course of two or three days, because it was less dangerous to not sleep than it was to sleep somewhere random and maybe get raped or kidnapped.” She would occasionally stay with her maternal grandmother during this time.
Career
2012–2014: Career beginnings
Frangipane started writing music when she was 17, and in 2012, she began posting videos to social media sites such as YouTube and Kik, and in particular Tumblr, under the username se7enteenblack. She became known for a parody of Taylor Swift’s song “I Knew You Were Trouble”, inspired by Swift’s relationship with Harry Styles. She then wrote a follow-up song about their relationship, which was posted online in early 2013. In early 2014, Frangipane went to a party and met a “music guy” who asked her to collaborate on a song with him because he liked her voice. The result, a song about her ex-boyfriend, titled “Ghost”, was posted by Frangipane on SoundCloud several weeks after it was recorded. Within hours, the song gained online popularity and she was subsequently contacted by several record labels, with the song eventually charting and going on radio. She signed with Astralwerks, feeling that they gave her more creative freedom than other labels that contacted her.
Following this, Frangipane played numerous acoustic shows in different cities under several stage names. She chose Halsey as her permanent stage name because it is an anagram of her first name and is also a reference to the Halsey Street station of the New York City Subway in Brooklyn,[b] a place where she spent a lot of time as a teenager. She also stated Halsey was the most popular name she used. Having written poems for years, Halsey began writing more serious songs as a way to promote them. Music became her “confessional approach” and a form of therapy after the difficult life she had endured.
2014–2016: Badlands and breakthrough
Halsey performing at The Troubadour in Los Angeles during the Badlands Tour in 2015
Halsey began touring with The Kooks in August 2014 and performed various original songs. She released her debut extended play, Room 93, on October 27, 2014. The EP charted in the lower regions of the US Billboard 200 and at number three on the Top Heatseekers chart. She then began work on her debut studio album and performed songs from it at South by Southwest in 2015, where she was the most tweeted-about performer of the night. She embarked on a co-headlining tour with Young Rising Sons in March, and in June, she became the opening act for Imagine Dragons during the North American leg of their Smoke + Mirrors Tour (2015).
Halsey’s debut studio album, Badlands, was released on August 28, 2015. She described Badlands as a concept album about a dystopian future society known as “The Badlands”, which was a metaphor for her mental state at the time, stating that each song meant something different to her. Halsey wrote all of the songs on the album when she was 19, while production was handled by a number of producers, including then-boyfriend, Norwegian producer Lido. The album was described by Halsey as not having a “proper radio hit”. It received positive reviews from music critics, with Joe Levy of Rolling Stone citing Halsey as a “new Tumblr popstar with a knack for sticky imagery”. Badlands debuted at #2 on the Billboard 200 albums chart in the US, selling 115,000 copies in its first week, of which 97,000 were pure album sales. The album found success in several other countries, including Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, where the album debuted in the top three. It was further promoted by Halsey’s Badlands Tour (2015–16), and her spot as the opening act for select dates of The Weeknd’s The Madness Fall Tour (2015).
Badlands was certified two-times Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for U.S. sales of 2,000,000 units.[48] Four singles were released from the album: “Ghost”, “New Americana”, “Colors”, and “Castle”, all of which were certified Platinum in the US.[49] The latter three singles achieved minor commercial success: “New Americana” reached number 60 on the US Billboard Hot 100,[50] “Castle” was rerecorded for the soundtrack of the 2016 film The Huntsman: Winter’s War.[51] “Gasoline” was not released as a single and was only included on the deluxe version of Badlands, but became one of the album’s most popular tracks and was certified Platinum in the US.”Roman Holiday”
Sample of the song “Roman Holiday”, displaying Halsey’s electropop and alternative pop style.
Halsey is noted for her distinctive “indie” style of singing, which has garnered controversial feedback. She sings with an accent different from her speaking voice. She is known as a pop, electropop, synth-pop, art pop, alternative pop,R&B, indie pop, and alternative R&B artist. The New York Times’ Jon Caramanica noted, “Halsey arrived as part of a slew of female pop rebels who emerged in the wake of Lorde’s early-2010s recalibration of the genre’s operating hierarchies.” When speaking of Badlands, Billboard stated, “Halsey’s larger-than-life vision combines the synthy darkness of Lorde, the neon-pop chutzpah of Miley Cyrus and the flickering film noir of Lana Del Rey.”
Halsey’s music focuses on her personal experiences and telling a story. She writes about relationships with other women in her music as a way of solidifying her bisexuality.
