Halsey's Pandora Live Show Hinted at What's to Come on New Album "Manic"
At her Pandora Live show on Dec. 11 in New York City, Halsey performed as if she could burst at any moment.
Sometimes, like during her 2019 single "Nightmare," it was a burst into flame. The song's power-rock chorus channeled Avril Lavigne-level angst as Halsey pounded around the stage with literal sprays of fire as a backdrop. Before she sang "Walls Could Talk," from her 2017 record Hopeless Fountain Kingdom, it was a burst of honesty. "I keep looking for love in other people that's like the love I have with you," she said, gesturing to the crowd of hundreds of devoted fans. "And I can't find it."
As Halsey has continued to grow and release new music after her breakout 2015 album Badlands, she's shown an increasing willingness to show those emotional explosions — and a decreasing number of f*cks to go along with that newfound power. Her music has taken on a darker, rockier vibe over the years to accompany her lyrics, especially since 2018. Her first no. 1 hit as a lead artist, "Without Me," introduced an era of incredibly layered, nuanced analyses of her own tendencies, past damaging relationships, and her mental health.
Her high-profile performances, meanwhile, have incorporated visual art to communicate a sort of frantic energy, the sense that something's trapped, or maybe has just been released. On Saturday Night Live, she did "Eastside," her song with benny blanco and Khalid, as a solo song, and as she sang, painted an upside-down portrait of a woman's face. More recently at the American Music Awards, she performed "Graveyard," complete with a choreographed dance number and splattering paints.
Her show for Pandora featured less performance art — but Halsey's own clothes took up the mantle, a white cropped tee splotched with paint stains. And Halsey used her words instead of her pictures, monologuing about leaving behind romances that weren't good for her, and realizing she deserved to be loved. "There's 100 different versions of me and I don't know which one I am yet," Halsey, whose real name is Ashley Frangipane, said at one point. On her new tour merch, a white sweatshirt reads, "Manic, an album made by Ashley for Halsey." The quote feels like a shift, an acknowledgment of another one of those 100 versions.
Before performing "clementine," one of the singles from her upcoming 2020 album Manic, Halsey spoke about her bipolar disorder, and how she's learned to see it as part of herself.
During the performance, she jerked around the stage like a tin man, squeaky around the gears, remembering how to use old muscles. Maybe her movements were foreshadowing, the physical embodiment of what Manic will sound like. The lyrics hint at the contrasts in her life right now. "Because in my world, I'm constantly having a breakthrough," she sings on "clementine." "Or a breakdown."
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