Born Ashley Frangipane, The now-22 year old Halsey chose her stage name as it is an anagram of her first name and a street in Brooklyn, New York where she spent much of her adolescence. Halsey built her following posting her music and poetry on sites like Myspace and Tumblr, and by 18 had 16,000 subscribers to her YouTube channel.At 20, she posted her first single, Ghost and sparked a major-label bidding war.
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Halsey described her upbringing saying she was an “unconventional child” who grew into an “inconvenient woman.” She read books like Lolita and The Great Gatsby at seven, and as a teen, moved into a bohemian loft. She credits her parents who were a young interracial couple with exposing her to an eclectic array of music (as she notes in the song New Americana)
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New Americana can be found on her 2014 debut album called Badlands, whose title is inspired by the 1973 Terrence Malick film. Halsey’s Badlands is a concept album about a fictional dystopian society, which is also a metaphor for her mental state. It was also inspired by films like Pulp Fiction and Apocalypse Now. She has said, “I love films that show people in a way that’s so real it’s almost unsettling, and that’s what really inspires me, because I write about people.”
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Halsey just had her first number one hit a few weeks ago as a guest vocalist on the Chainsmokers’ hit Closer.
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