From homelessness to troubled relationships, New Jersey pop force Halsey hasn’t had a smooth ride to the top of the charts. Ahead of her Glastonbury debut, she explains how she channeled her troubles into a strange, striking new record Describing Halsey’s second record as a concept album would be to understate its preposterousness. Its title, Hopeless Fountain Kingdom, is her own concept of a purgatory-like realm whose back story is so deeply finessed that it includes individually named carp. There’s some Greek mythology thrown in along the way, too. But the imagery around the album’s release, and its spoken-word interludes, also pay homage to Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet. “I went balls-to-the-wall with this one,” is Halsey’s own way of recognising what is also a rather good pop record.“When people ask me about it I say: ‘Yeah, I went through this really terrible breakup and I naturally did what any normal 22-year-old girl would do – I called Baz Luhrmann.” Luhrmann loved the project so much that he got involved with the album’s promotion and expressed a desire to work with Halsey in the future. It has also been wholly embraced by the New Jersey-born singer’s fans, whose symbiotic relationship with the singer makes the hysteria surrounding peak-era Gaga seem nonchalant in comparison. Those fans have clearly responded well to the frankness with which Halsey talks about her sexuality, being bipolar and the product of an interracial marriage, and the struggles she faced as a teen. But they seem most seduced by the escapist worlds in which she situates her music. As she talks about her passion for video gaming, the Easter eggs and intricate backstories woven through her songs begin to make more sense, although none of this high-concept japery will come as any surprise to those who have been following her expeditious rise to the fringes of pop’s A-list. In 2014, her debut EP Room 93 centred on the broad theme of being stuck in a hotel room. The following year her album Badlands, including breakthrough hit New Americana, dwelled on mental isolation in a city based loosely on Las Vegas. Continue reading...
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