REVIEW: Halsey cements her legacy on The Nice Impersonator

On her fifth studio album, a down-and-out Halsey is pressured to confront her personal mortality. The product? A heavy, hour-long tour de power.

In 2021, the New Jersey-born star delivered her profession’s standout work up to now in If I Can’t Have Love, I Need Energy. A startling document produced by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, that undertaking landed with a 53-minute horror movie that noticed the songwriter straddle music and cinema with genre-bending prowess.

On The Nice Impersonator, Halsey sheds that maximalist manufacturing however the album in some way carries a horror even higher than its predecessor. Monitoring her well being battle with lupus and a lymphoproliferative dysfunction, the songwriter wields her pen with an alarming honesty that makes the document one of many twenty first century’s most uncomfortable listens.

Halsey has develop into one of many main lights on the planet of idea albums since arriving in full among the many mysterious Badlands of 2015 and the story of The Nice Impersonator is as soon as once more instructed by a lens. This time round, the star impersonates 18 musical inspirations from Bruce Springsteen to Dolly Parton and Evanescence to Bjork, imagining her profession enjoying out throughout the many years.

So far as the artist’s ideas go, there’s no denying that The Nice Impersonator is probably the most absolutely fleshed out of all of them. Even earlier than the document dropped, the star had shared anecdotes on the artist who had impressed every music and donned their iconic outfits in an extended sequence of social media posts. The method was mocked by some corners of the web, however its thoroughness was undoubtedly spectacular – that is an artist dedicated to her imaginative and prescient.

Whereas Halsey leaves no stone unturned together with her most fleshed-out idea up to now, additionally it is maybe her least convincing try at disguising her intimate tales. The ache with which the star confronts the sickening actuality of her previous two years stays too crushing to be wrapped in a bow of musical icons.

There are two ideas on the coronary heart of the album’s dense 66 minutes. The primary is a realisation that she can not carry on conserving on. The second is a query over the legacy she is going to go away behind.

One of many singer’s most startling reveals of her profession got here at Leeds Competition in 2022. Headlining the celebrated UK pageant, the star left the stage a number of occasions to throw up however returned to complete her set. On the time, an announcement claimed that it was all the way down to meals poisoning however at her intimate Koko present this summer season, Halsey admitted these have been the primary signs of her severe well being battle.

It’s unattainable not to think about that night time because the star confesses on Britney Spears-inspired ‘Fortunate’ that, “I instructed all people I used to be tremendous for a complete rattling 12 months, and that’s the most important lie of my profession.”

Between releasing that single in July and ‘The Finish’ in June, Halsey burst the bubble round her star persona. The amped-up and power-hungry voice behind If I Can’t Have Love, I Need Energy was, in truth, preventing to outlive when the curtain got here down.

Discovering the braveness to inform the world was clearly a mission. On ‘Ego’, which packs an simple The Cranberries-influenced punch, the star takes a hammer to the persona of Halsey. “I believe I ought to attempt to kill my ego,” she admits earlier than including, “I’m doing manner worse than I’m admitting.”

The singer’s well being battle is current in each second of The Nice Impersonator, ‘Canine Years’ and ‘I By no means Beloved You’ significantly visceral within the photographs of blood transfusions and holes in hearts.

Written when within the trenches together with her well being, there’s little time for retrospection on The Nice Impersonator, however Halsey does enable herself to look again on these months within the highlight earlier than prognosis – maybe most pertinently on the album monitor.

‘The Nice Impersonator’ serves because the document’s epilogue. Halsey could have developed a penchant for impersonations however there’s a winking acceptance that her biggest act got here when attempting to cover her well being battle from prying eyes. “I’m in a pick-up truck, the door is caught, I’m sinking within the water, the woman inside is waving however the individuals simply applaud her, it is a cry for assist,” she muses.

The recurring considered legacy is unsurprisingly current on that album nearer too, as Halsey asks whether or not “the story dies with its narrator”. That prepare of thought climaxes midway by the document on ‘Lonely is the Muse’.

A music that could possibly be considered the artist’s magnum opus, it’s a unprecedented piece of music. The general public dialogue over what celebrities do or don’t owe followers is a sizzling matter in at this time’s popular culture – however there’s no doubting that over the previous decade Halsey has given her followers all the pieces.

The 30-year-old has been candid about sexual abuse, miscarriage, her struggles to conceive a toddler, an advocate for LGBTQ+ rights and way more. A job mannequin for thus many, it makes the menacing manner she toys with martyrdom over crashing manufacturing on ‘Lonely is the Muse’ all too searing a pay attention.

Throughout The Nice Impersonator, Halsey asks listeners time and time once more what her legacy could also be – it takes lower than a minute on opener ‘Solely Residing Lady in LA’ for her to marvel how large a crowd her funeral would pull.

It’s comprehensible why the artist could overanalyse her public popularity too. There’s no doubting her credentials as a number one fashionable pop artist however the work the world is aware of her greatest for – specifically the likes of ‘Nearer’, ‘Eastside’ and With out Me’ – are removed from her greatest releases.

Halsey’s most pioneering music is available in If I Can’t Have Love I Need Energy, the bed room pop of Room 93 and grit of BADLANDS, which stay extra cult classics than mainstream hits. These initiatives deserve extra acclaim and ought to be considered the singer’s legacy, however will that be the case?

What is for certain, is that Halsey deserves greater than the hand she has been dealt. There’s a way that she is aware of that too. On ‘Darwinism’ the singer seems into the world as a monstrous outsider, harbouring a desperation to slot in – “You all grew physique elements I concern I’ll by no means develop,” she coos. In the meantime, on the agonising ‘Lifetime of the Spider (Draft)’ she pours fragile scorn over a world that has misunderstood her.

It’s uncommon that Halsey permits reduction to spill into The Nice Impersonator however the moments of hope come as an emotional suckerpunch, and centre on the long run she sees for son Ender.

It’s the three-year-old’s cute babbling that opens the ultimate ‘Letter to God (1998)’, however the innocence of youth is made robust to experience because the singer watches him play with toys on the kitchen flooring. “I don’t ever need to go away him, however I don’t suppose it’s my alternative,” she accepts earlier than begging a divine energy for extra time.