Rolling Stone Australia — June 2017

You’re still on Subpop, an indie label,

after selling 250,000 albums. Were

you tempted to sign with a major label?

Italkedtoeverymajorlabelunder

thesun.TheydothisJedimindtrick:

“It’stimetogotothenextlevel.”I’ve

seen smart, principled people try, but

it never works out. But as long as they

say,“It’stimetogotothenextlevel”,

then you will forget all that. There

are many other things I’ve said no to.

I was asked to audition for the second

season ofStranger Things.Ididn’t

wantthatlevelofexposure.Idon’t

want to be TV famous.

So how long ago did you take acid?

About three hours ago.

Did you drop acid beforeSNL?

Mm-hmm.It’sjustkindoflikebeing

astoner.I’mnotonapsychedelicjour-

neyallthetime.

Do you worry about damaging your

brain like Syd Barrett or Brian Wilson?

With them, the real danger was in

the first time you take it. It can ex-

acerbate pre-existing [conditions],

like schizophrenia. I’m not ready to

give it up. I think living is just a risk.

Inthenextfewyears,we’regoingto

start seeing the long-term effects of

cellphones.

You recently erased your Twitter and In-

stagram accounts. Why?

Iwasinthestudioworkingonthe

album,anditwasdistracting.But

thinkaboutwhatTwitterwouldlook

likeifitwasaphysicalspaceandthe

peoplewhohungouttheretalkedthat

way. Would you ever want to go there?

There will be moments when I go on

Twitter and let people hate me. It’s,

like, self-harm.

You’ve been described as a “hipster fa-

vourite”. Does that ever annoy you?

No. Because what are the traits of a

hipster? It’s judgmental, petty people

saying, “I’m cooler.” At the core of lev-

elling that charge, someone is saying

you’re not as cool as you think you are,

so it’s them tacitly saying they’re cooler

or more authentic than me. But isn’t

that what a hipster does?

You’ve also been called “insufferable”

and “superwhite” online.

Again, that’s white people saying

that.

A lot of the songs on your new album

reminded me of Neil Young’s On the

Beach.

I think someone should start a

website where they do modern-day

music writing – the intersectional

virtue-warrior style of music writ-

ing–aboutoldalbums.WithOn the

Beachit would be, “Oh, great. Another

whitemansingingabouthowtoughit

is to be white.”

W

hen halsey started work

on her second album, June 2nd’s

Hopeless Fountain Kingdom,

she faced an entirely blank slate,

havingwrittenzerosongsforitintheyear

since her debut, 2015’s platinum-certified

Badlands.“I’mapurger,”shesays.“Ibottleev-

erythingupandpurgeitalloutofme.That’s

whyIwritesoquickly.It’slikeI’mvomiting

months of psychoanalysis.”

SheworkedwithproducersincludingGreg

Kurstin (Adele, Sia), Benny Blanco (Katy

Perry, Ed Sheeran) and Ricky Reed (Twenty

One Pilots), and the result, like Badlands, is

a concept album of sorts. Its story centres on

a pair of lovers in a limbo-like realm that con-

nects to the futuristic setting of the previous

album: Call it the Halsey Cinematic Universe.

“I was a big comic-book kid,” she confesses. “A

big Marvel nerd.”

She also came to realise that, sci-fi trap-

pingsaside,shewasreallywritingabouther

own collapsing years-long relationship. “The

whole reason you make a record,” she says,

“is to figure stuff out about yourself.” She had

been nursing a mysterious obsession with the

story of Romeo and Juliet, which she fi-

nally connected to a feeling that “I had

killed off a version of myself just so we

couldmakeourlovework.Sometimes

you’reinarelationshipforsolongand

youbecomeadifferentperson.Youlose

yourself because you change for that per-

son.” In the end, she says, “I put the seal

on that relationship and fully purged my-

self of the feelings for that person at the

same time as I finished my record.”

Halsey has talked down her

ownsingingvoiceinthepast,

but she found new confidence in

the recording process, stretching

out into more nimble and soulful

R&B-tinged moments. There’s

at least one pure piano ballad on

the album, recorded with Kur-

stin.“Alotofmysoundhasbeen

attributed to this experimen-

tal pop production style,” she

says,“sostrippingasongback is

unique for me.”

She credits “Closer”, her smash

single with the Chainsmokers,

which vastly outperformed her

own tracks on the charts, with

having“fine-tunedmysense

aboutmynewmusic”,evenifshe

had never expected that song to

have quite so much success. “It

threw me into the deep end,” she says. “I

went from being this underground blog

girl to being this mainstream thing.”

Her own debut, she contends, “wasn’t

supposed to be a radio album”. Though

she still sees herself as an “alternative”

artist (“‘alternative’ used to mean al-

ternative rock,” she says, “but I think in

2017 the word ‘alternative’ means alter-

native pop”), she expects Hopeless Foun-

tain Kingdomto generate some airplay.

“I am more than capable of writing radio

music,”shesays,“andhopefullyI’llput

my money where my mouth is on this

album.” BRIAN HIATT

Halsey Aims for

Pop Dominance

AftertoppingthechartswiththeChainsmokers,the

singer recruits big names for cinematic second LP

Halsey live at

Lollapalooza

Ju ne, 2017 RollingStoneAus.com | Rolling Stone | 21

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“I bottle everything

up and purge it out,”

she says. “It’s like I’m

vomiting months of

psychoanalysis.”