Halsey

At 30 years old, Halsey has this physical status:

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, 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.

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. Four singles were released from the album: "Ghost", "New Americana", "Colors", and "Castle", all of which were certified Platinum in the US. The latter three singles achieved minor commercial success: "New Americana" reached number 60 on the US Billboard Hot 100, "Castle" was rerecorded for the soundtrack of the 2016 film The Huntsman: Winter's War. "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.

Halsey was featured on the song "The Feeling" by Justin Bieber for his fourth studio album, Purpose (2015). The song was not officially released as a single, though it entered the top forty of the Billboard Hot 100 and was certified Gold in the US and Silver in the United Kingdom. In February 2016, Halsey was one of four female performers to partner with MAC cosmetics for their Future Forward line; she released a lipstick named after herself. The senior vice president and group creative director of the company, James Gager, said, "It feels like a great thing to be able to support artists who are breaking through but aren't necessarily at the top top, to push them forward." In May 2016, Halsey released the song "Tokyo Narita (Freestyle)", produced by Lido. The song was a standalone track that served as a promotional single for both her and Lido. In July 2016, she collaborated with 26 other artists for the charity single "Hands", which was a tribute for the victims of the Pulse nightclub shooting.

On July 29, 2016, Halsey was featured as a vocalist on the Chainsmokers' single "Closer", a song she also cowrote. The track achieved major commercial success: it topped the Billboard Hot 100 for 12 consecutive weeks, topped the charts of 12 other countries, sold more than 15 million units worldwide, and is one of the most streamed songs on Spotify. The official lyric video for "Closer" was released on YouTube on July 29, 2016, and has since garnered over two billion views. Billboard magazine noted Halsey's solo verse as a favorable part of the song, and the song earned her a Grammy Award nomination for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance.

Halsey announced work on her second studio album prior to the release of Badlands, with progress on the record continuing throughout 2016 and 2017. In January 2017, she released the single "Not Afraid Anymore"; it appears on the soundtrack of the film Fifty Shades Darker (2017). "Now or Never" was released on April 4 as the lead single from her second studio album. The song debuted at number 52 on the US Billboard Hot 100 and later peaked at number 17. It was certified 2× Platinum by the RIAA. "Now or Never" also reached the top 20 of Australia and Malaysia, and sold 500,000 units outside of the US. Two promotional singles were also made available prior to the release of the album: "Eyes Closed" and "Strangers"'.

The record, Hopeless Fountain Kingdom, finally came out on June 2. It consisted of more "radio friendly" songs in comparison to her previous work, which she attributed to her desire to prove she was "more than capable" of creating "radio-ready" music. Much like her debut, Hopeless Fountain Kingdom is a concept album that revolves around a pair of lovers in a tale based on Romeo and Juliet; the project was inspired by her breakup with Lido. The album also focuses on Halsey's bisexuality and on bisexual characters. Hopeless Fountain Kingdom debuted atop the Billboard 200 and the Canadian Albums Chart. First-week sales in the US were of 106,000 units, with 76,000 being pure album sales. Similar to her debut, Hopeless Fountain Kingdom was certified Platinum by the RIAA. Due to its rise to number one, Halsey became the first woman to achieve a number one album in the US in 2017. To promote the record, Halsey embarked on the Hopeless Fountain Kingdom World Tour, which began on September 29, 2017, her twenty-third birthday. The artist also performed surprise DJ sets at Emo Nite in Los Angeles in 2017. The second single from Hopeless Fountain Kingdom, "Bad at Love", was released on August 22. The song peaked at number five in the US, which made it her highest peak as a lead artist at the time. It was certified 4× Platinum by the RIAA, and sold more than 300,000 records outside the US. In December, Halsey's collaboration with then-boyfriend G-Eazy, "Him & I", was released, and later peaked at number 14 on the Billboard Hot 100 and achieved a 2× Platinum certification by the RIAA in the US. The song also reached the top ten of 13 other countries' charts. Halsey also collaborated with the band Thirty Seconds to Mars on the song "Love Is Madness", from their 2018 album America.

On January 13, 2018, Halsey was featured as a musical guest on the American television variety show Saturday Night Live, where she performed "Bad at Love" and "Him & I", with G-Eazy. On March 15, she released "Alone", together with a new version featuring American rapper Big Sean and British rapper Stefflon Don. It was released as the third and final single from Hopeless Fountain Kingdom, and a music video came out in April. "Alone" was certified Platinum by the RIAA and reached number one on Billboard's Dance Club chart, though it only peaked at number 66 on the Billboard Hot 100. Halsey sang with Khalid on Benny Blanco's debut single "Eastside", which was released on July 12, along with a music video discussing various parts of Halsey's life. The song peaked at number nine on the Billboard Hot 100 and topped the charts of five other countries. It was certified 2× Platinum in the US, and sold over one million units outside the country. Also in the same year, she appeared in two films: she voiced Wonder Woman in Teen Titans Go! To the Movies, and cameoed as herself in A Star Is Born, directed by Bradley Cooper. Halsey was also a key advisor on the US version of The Voice in its fifteenth season.

On October 4, 2018, Halsey released a single titled "Without Me", her first through Capitol Records. She stated that the song was very personal to her. On October 29, the official music video for "Without Me" was released, featuring a "G-Eazy lookalike", following their second breakup. This song went on to become Halsey's most successful single as a lead artist to date, becoming her first solo number-one single on the Billboard Hot 100. It topped the chart for two non-consecutive weeks and remained in the top five for 22 weeks. It also reached the top three of the UK, Malaysia, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and Ireland. The song has been certified 9× Platinum in the US, 2× Platinum in the UK, 8× Platinum in Australia, and 9× Platinum in Canada. Due to "Without Me" reaching number one on the Billboard Hot 100, Halsey became the eighth woman to achieve multiple number ones on the chart during the 2010s.

The singer made several releases and collaborated with various artists during the first several months of 2019, including a remix of "Without Me", featuring American rapper Juice WRLD on January 9, the song "11 Minutes" with Yungblud (featuring Travis Barker) on February 14, with the accompanying music video released on February 22, and the song "Boy with Luv" with Korean boy band BTS on April 12, the music video for which became the most–viewed music video within its first 24 hours on YouTube, with 74.6 million views. On April 19, she and 29 other musical acts were featured on the Lil Dicky song "Earth", a charity single about climate change awareness.

On February 9, Halsey again appeared on Saturday Night Live, this time as both host and musical guest. Her performance was praised, with ratings for the show rising and a younger audience watching. In March, she announced that her third studio album would be released in 2019. The album is titled Manic, and was eventually released on January 17, 2020. On May 17, 2019, Halsey issued the single "Nightmare", which debuted and peaked at number fifteen on the US Hot 100. On September 13, 2019, she released the single "Graveyard". On September 23, 2019, Halsey announced the Manic World Tour, in support of her third studio album. The first leg of the tour took place in Europe between February and March 2020. She released a promotional single, "Clementine", on her birthday, September 29, 2019. On January 25, 2020, she again appeared on Saturday Night Live, where she performed two songs from Manic: "You Should Be Sad" and "Finally // Beautiful Stranger". She also appeared in a few sketches.

In December 2019, Halsey appeared on the Bring Me the Horizon EP Music to Listen To…. The band's vocalist, Oli Sykes, later teased additional collaborations; one of them was revealed a month later to be the Oli Sykes and Jordan Fish-produced song "Experiment on Me", from the soundtrack of the superhero film Birds of Prey (2020), which was released on February 7, 2020. A collaboration with Marshmello titled "Be Kind" was released on May 1, with the music video premiering on June 27. On June 25, 2020, Halsey announced that her first book of poetry, entitled I Would Leave Me If I Could, was available for preorder. The same year, she also released her first live album, Badlands (Live from Webster Hall), on August 28.

On August 27, 2021, Halsey released her fourth studio album, If I Can't Have Love, I Want Power, with little prior promotion. Produced by Nine Inch Nails members Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, it received critical acclaim. Leading up to the album's release, a companion film of the same name was screened at select IMAX theaters; it was later released on HBO Max on October 7. The album was further supported by the single "I Am Not a Woman, I'm a God".

In January 2022, Halsey wrote and produced a song, titled "So Good". When the song's release was withheld from release due to Capitol needing to test the song's "virality", Halsey posted a TikTok video criticizing Capitol Records on May 22, 2022 for not being allowed to release "So Good" without an "accompanying campaign or TikTok video to make it go viral." Five days prior, without the approval of Capitol, Halsey played a snippet of her song in a TikTok video. In the days following her post, questions arose regarding whether or not Capitol was going to take legal action against her. Music industry attorney Erin M. Jacobson mentioned in an article by TIME that "[i]t is rare that a label would sue one of its own artists, especially when the label plans to continue working with that artist. Further, using such a short piece of the record could also be seen as a promotional use." Capitol Records eventually conceded on May 31, 2022, amid criticism and scrutiny from a variety of music artists, and set a release date for the song of June 9, 2022. There have been questions to whether the release controversy was a marketing stunt from observers, though Halsey maintained throughout the controversy that it was not fake. Many news outlets commented on the increasing nature, and problem, of pressures for TikTok virality on musicians by record labels.

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