Halsey covers the March issue of Glamour Magazine. I don’t remember her getting too many major fashion-mag covers in the past, but then again, I’m not paying super-close attention to Halsey’s comings and goings. If I’m right and this is one of the rare moments when she’s gotten a somewhat major cover, I have to admit that I laughed a little bit at how seriously she takes herself. She’s 24 and she’s a perpetual motion machine of melodrama. Halsey was diagnosed with bipolar disorder when she was 17, and I know her disorder affects how she sees the world, how she sees herself and how she gives interviews. Fair enough. She talks about her breakdown at 17 and a lot more. I’m still convinced that half of her backstory is an epic piece of fiction, but as long as she keeps repeating it endlessly, I guess people will believe her. You can read Halsey’s Glamour cover story here. Some highlights:
On death: “So there’s a Native American proverb, and it’s like you have two deaths in your life, right? The first is when your physical body obviously decays, and you are buried, and you are dead. And the second is the last time somebody ever says your name.”
She remembers every single fan: “Watching my dad be like that affected me as an artist tremendously. I have met tens of thousands of fans; I don’t forget any of them. Ever.”
On her privilege: “I have obviously been given this massive privilege and responsibility to effect change. At the end of the day, no matter how meaningless one person might consider my art, it could have meant the world to somebody else.”
On her messy breakup with G-Eazy: “The biggest lesson I learned was to make art, not headlines. Because it can become quite easy, in the social media generation, to go from being a musician to becoming a personality.”
Her breakdown at 17: “Given what I’ve been experiencing the past couple of years, if I hadn’t already had my meltdown, who knows when it would have happened?”
Competition between pop starlets: “We are just not f–king having it…We’re so supportive,” she says of her relationship with musical peers, Ariana Grande and Lorde. She points out that men are seldom accused of hating each other, even if they have similar appeal. “There are so many male artists who are regurgitations of each other: they all f–king dress the same, they all have the same stylist, they all wear the same f–king clothes, they write with the same writers. We live in a world where women are required to be so f–king original, it’s crazy.”
On how people don’t believe her stories of her hardscrabble teen years: “I was literally living on the Lower East Side in a f–king heroin den, like with all of these artists. It was 2014, the last year that New York was kind of bohemian.”
Granted, I’m much older than Halsey (or older than she claims to be), but I am still laughing at 2014 being some generational-shift year, after which New York was no longer boho. 2014!!!!! LMAO. As for how the pop starlets all support one another… I think that’s sort of true. Especially after the terrorist attack at Ariana Grande’s concert in the UK, that was a moment where there was so much solidarity among the women of pop music especially. That being said, I imagine one or two of those pop stars talk sh-t about Halsey when she’s not around.
Photos courtesy of Eric Ray Davidson for Glamour, sent from promotional Glamour email.
I think she’s quite talented, and I like a lot of her music, but she sounds pretty funny when she talks. why is 2014 the last year New York was Bohemian? because that was the last year she was living in a heroin test?
Yeah, I agree on all counts. 2014? come on now. That’s just showing how young you are.
I feel like basically every 5 or 10 years people start lamenting the death of “bohemian” New York and pick some random year as the death. I know New York has changed a great deal over past the few decades, but 2014? LMAO.
Honestly the wall street boom in the 80-90s killed the 70s bohemian nyc.
Exactly. Bless her nothing-existed-before-me heart.
I don’t know where this quote comes from but .. “I miss the old New York. The tourists looked frightened.”
As a (foreign) child of the 80s New York was SCARY and DANGEROUS. It’s reputation shifted in the 1990s I think with Guiliani. When I finally went circa 2002 it was very cleaned up already, with only a couple of roughish areas, so the idea that it was somehow grungy and boho in 2014 …. err, no. More like 1984 methinks.
Well it’s funny b/c that was the year I’d decided to leave, after living there for 26 years, 21 of them in a dorm-room sized, rent stabilized hovel in the east village. I’d say the kiss of death, for my neighborhood, in my eyes, came with the big bankster crash of 2009. (I know it started 2008 but it took a year for most of my long time favorite places to suddenly cease to exist.)
I don’t know with her. I kind of like her voice – it’s different. But I also think she’s incredibly pretty. I just don’t think I actually like her though. I guess if she’s only 24 she still has a ways to go maturity wise, but I find her annoying. You talk to a teacher who spent day in and day out with thousands of students and they’re not going to remember every single one – there’s no way quick fan interactions are leaving that much of an impression on her. She’d have been smarter to say that she appreciates every interaction and will never forget how sweet and supportive her fans have been. And it’s just funny where she’s saying they’re “not f-cking having it” when it comes to competition between pop stars when she made a name for herself with Taylor Swift diss tracks ahahha.
I wouldn’t give her a pass because she’s 24. Ariana Grande and Lorde are in her age demographic but have much more self-awareness. Hasley takes herself way too seriously. Miss Closer and Without Me hates being called a pop artist, that’s how edgy she is!
Agreed on your take–I like her voice and she IS really pretty but I don’t really think I like her either. I will also throw in that she was pretty funny in SNL. She just seems very dramatic
Who is her Dad? Is he a musician too?
I had the same question!
As far as I can see, he manages a car dealership.
Suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuure she lived in a “literal heroin den.” Suuuuuure.
I guess she’s swiftly running out of cultures to appropriate to be the Wokest Of Them All.
NY hasn’t been bohemian since Giuliani cleaned up.
Blah blah. She’s so pretentious, which is kind of funny, because her music is very generic.
not a clue who she is; but the lower east side is nyu territory. and inhabited by wannabes who don’t have a clue. 2014… puh-leeze. she never would have survived it in 1984. ooohhh… but she’s wearing doc martens; clearly a rebel.
She’s annoying. Idk her songs only her affiliation w g eazy and her habit of being a serial dater. Girl cannot be alone for a minute. And I wouldn’t even consider New York bohemian. I’m not a New Yorker but travel there monthly for work so if someone on here from ny could point where in ny is boho please cause I can’t. Soho?? Hahahahahh
I’m loving all the NYC stans dragging Halsey in the comments. I’d love to know her metric for deciding 2014 was the last bohemian year of NYC.
Her image of the LES sounds more like some fantasy of the 1970s/1980s than 2014. In 2014, it was trendy brunch spots and cute vegan shops. If anything, 2014 might have been the last year before the cost of real estate started to force shops/restaurants out of business in lower manhattan. Sigh.
I have watched documentaries on Manhattan in the 70s and 80s and it was a dumpster fire. The early 90s were truly the last time anything organically “bohemian” was happening in Manhattan. That’s when Giuliani started cleaning NY up (wow, imagine a time where Rudy
Giuliani seemed sane).
I get she’s talking about the lower east side but come on! Her generation lives their lives through social media. She’s exactly the kind of pretentious hipster kid that ruins the vibe of a neighborhood along with over gentrification.
right!!!!!!
Yes!! She’s the type to move into a neighborhood post-gentrification and then mourn for what the neighborhood was like 30 years ago. Sigh.
I couldn’t stop laughing about your comment, so true!!!
Very few people can pull of the mouth open pose that she is trying and it’s not working for her. I always think people who pose like that look like they have a runny nose. I don’t know much about this girl except that she had one song I kind of like from 2 years ago that had the saving grace of being a Flume song featuring Halsey. This interview makes me chuckle so I hope she keeps giving more. I love when people mindlessly pontificate about silly things, case in point the oh so bohemian years of the early 2000s that are gone now. Say it ain’t so!
I like most her songs but not that horrid Eastside that sounds like they wanted to copy Chapman’s Fast Car. It’s sang in weird mumbling baby voices, as if it were Mickey and Minnie singing. It must be sped up or something? And “eastside” sounds like “easside” – it makes me think that “cash me ousside girl.”
“(or older than she claims to be)”
Is there some kind of conspiracy over her age?
she sounds dumb
So annoying. She just grinds me like no one else.
I absolutely loved her performance on SNL a few weeks ago. But in interviews, she comes off as so gd annoying. Maybe that means I’m getting old, or maybe it just means she’s annoying, or it could be a combination.
I tried to like her, I really did. I love her voice and she is a beautiful girl (but the tattoos, blech). But the crap that comes out of her mouth is annoying as hell. She seems like a very real headcase. Good luck to the young guy who is dating her now, she is a hurricane of melodrama. I like how she says “make art, not headlines” but proceeded to put her ex on blast on SNL 4 months after they broke up, while she’s been with another guy the entire time. Like, what? And that was after she created an entire video for a song she said was about her ex with an actor who looked identical to her ex. But then denied it was purposefully done. Art, not headlines. She’s an idiot.
Well, considering she’s a replica of Pink … SOMEBODY has lost her originality! Not sure it’s NYC though lollll.
I used to think so too – Pink is who actually came to mind when I first started hearing about her. She could only hope to grow into someone as cool and original as Pink. I adore her! Cheap imitation so far for sure.
As a 29 year old (admittedly with a baby face…) She looks WAY older than me… I always assumed she was around 30
So I lol’d at your “(or older than she claims to be)” comment, because YES
I must be officially old because I have no idea who this woman is and though I’m not a New Yorker I find it hard to believe that 2014 was the year New York stopped being bohemian.
She tries so hard to be edgy. Her music is nothing more than generic pop. Strikes me as phony.
and just because i’m that old bitch: ‘bohemian’ would have been the west (greenwich village); the lower east side was heavily jewish/Hispanic (and very low income) thru the late 70s/early 80s; then punk and rockers heavily dominated until the mid 90s when nyu expanded and all the trust fund brats took over — being so cool and all. the palladium, the ritz, cbgb’s, fillmore east and a hundred more rock clubs have all been obliterated.. even my beloved dan lynch’s is gone and the bottom line was eaten up by nyu.
this bitch doesn’t know what the hell she’s talking about.
“So there’s a Native American proverb…”
Seriously, what does that even mean? That’s about as specific as saying “there’s a European proverb,” isn’t it? In the part of western Canada where I grew up, the native people I knew were Kwakwa̱ka̱’wakw and Coast Salish, and I’m not an expert in their culture or language, but I’m going to go out on a limb and venture a guess that most likely neither group shares proverbs with, say, the Navajo Nation two thousand miles to the south. If you’re going to compete in the Woke Olympics, Halsey, you gotta be more precise.
Well-said, that quote made me roll my eyes hard.
Oh yes, the great bohemian summer of 2014 in New York. I can smell the avocado toast like it was yesterday.
jay FTW! LOLZ.