Halsey - "The Great Impersonator"

Processing mortality in camouflage

Ashley Nicolette Frangipane, better known as Halsey, has been in the limelight since her 2015 debut album, Badlands. That record fueled a meteoric rise, and she has been a force in the pop world ever since, despite that her subsequent releases have, in my opinion, failed to live up to the initial hype.

Taken individually, her songs are clearly still her and still good. But the albums have, collectively, felt like something was missing. Maybe because she was no longer as deep into the headspace which drove Badlands, conceptually;¹ maybe because, as a listener, Halsey’s gritty dark pop lost its novelty pretty quickly.

I can’t be sure.

What I do know is that The Great Impersonator, Halsey’s fifth album, is the most sincere thing she’s done yet — and that says a lot for somebody who built their name on writing about what it’s like to have a fragile mental state without holding anything back.

“Bold claim, random music nerd,” I hear you saying, “and also is it good?”

To which I say: Fuckin’ chill. Context is everything; nothing happens in a vacuum. And the context of this album is that, for the majority of its creation, Halsey believed it would be the last music she would ever make.

Ever.

See, Halsey has never been the picture of health, even if you discount her documented mental health concerns, and she finally started getting answers on what and why as Pandemic restrictions started getting lifted in 2021 and 2022. She revealed diagnoses of Ehlers–Danlos syndrome, Sjögren syndrome, mast cell activation syndrome, and POTS in 2022.

It’s what she withheld that matters, though — for two years, while writing The Great Impersonator, she struggled with two other diagnoses she was given in 2022: Lupus and rare T-Cell disorder. Historically, a Lupus diagnosis meant a remaining life expectancy of about five years, but modern medicine allows most to survive more than ten years with it, and many to live out what would otherwise be considered a “normal” lifespan. The advances do not erase the initial shock of the diagnosis, though; while Halsey states she is doing and feeling much better today than she was in 2022, and we can expect that The Great Impersonator will not be her final album, her initial response to the diagnosis (and the subsequent life-and-death thematic elements contained in the album) is completely understandable.

The Lupus diagnosis is also directly referenced in the album’s title, dovetailed, of course, with the concept of insecurity and impostor syndrome. Lupus is one of several diseases which are referred to, individually and collectively, as “the great imitator”.

There is a third layer to that, but we’ll cover that momentarily.

First, we should actually dive into the album, which begins with “Only Living Girl in LA”, which is also the longest track on the album. It’s an immediate shocker to anybody familiar with Halsey’s music — it’s mostly acoustic, with the first non-acoustic elements beginning to enter the mix between the 1:30 and 2:00 marks. Even then, it feels closer to raw folk than the dark, seedy pop we’ve come to expect from Halsey.

And for five minutes, Halsey relates what it feels like to be so acutely aware of your mortality and the knowledge that your time is limited. Then, for the last minute or so, it all falls apart in a blend of clashing electronic elements and heavy percussion.

Then the album moves into “Ego”, its second track, which seems to have been placed here in order to broadly define the album’s scope, or to reassure Halsey’s fans that the album won’t be completely downtempo and depressing. It’s an out-and-out rocker once the chorus arrives, and absolutely a banger.

The third track, “Dog Years”, twists us deep into Alternative territory with a warped self-image and shit-tons of discordance.

Three songs into the album, and it’s all vastly different styles and sounds. It doesn’t feel sonically cohesive. But that’s intentional; here’s where that third layer comes in.

Over on her Instagram, Halsey spent most of October posting daily images of her ‘imitating’ different artists and releasing song titles. Wikipedia’s editors have, helpfully, compiled the full list:

So, using this, those first three songs correlate to Marilyn Monroe, Dolores O’Riordan of The Cranberries, and PJ Harvey. Monroe, of course, wasn’t a musical artist, but she’s an iconic figure who defines an era.

Halsey has billed the album as a “Confessional Concept Album” — the concept being what Halsey might have sounded like if she had debuted in different decades. To drive this concept home, three of the album’s eighteen tracks are variants of the same short song, “Letter to God”, dated 1974, 1983, and 1998. These songs give direct side-by-side comparisons for the stylistic differences that Halsey is pulling on from different decades. They’re shorter than I typically like, but they still feel like enough.

Halsey also imitates herself on “Hurt Feelings”, as a bit of a control track to deepen the comparisons; except, frankly, I don’t think that one really comes across clearly. It doesn’t remind me of Badlands. And if the criticism of Pitchfork’s² Shaad D’Souza (“[Halsey is] not great at channeling artists from eras gone by…”) holds any water whatsoever, it’s on this song, channeling herself. Take from that what you will.

Of course, the strongest imitation is “Lucky”, which directly interpolates Britney Spears’ song with the same title. “Lucky” is also the most Pop-forward track on the album.

The album still largely feels more Folk than Pop. While it does have more polished moments, Halsey’s delivery is raw from start to finish. While the cynics out there might note that she’s leaning into the whole ‘tortured artist’ schtick, she isn’t faking anything. The Great Impersonator is as genuine as it comes. Its concept, while neat and decently executed, ultimately seems superficial and somewhat unneeded as it draws attention away from the heart of the album.

But it did make her step out of her comfort zone, which is, I think, what she needed.

I don’t know what Halsey does after this album, but it’s going to be hard to follow. At the very least, she’ll get the opportunity to try.

Rating: Blue

1. It’s worth noting that the year Badlands came out was the year Halsey broke up with Matty Healey. Yeah, that Matty Healey. The same one who inspired most of Taylor Swift’s Tortured Poets Department. And since she wrote Badlands about being in a bad mental space while dating Healey, we can surmise, at the very least, that he wasn’t a positive influence on that.

Halsey is the second pop star ex of Matty Healey to release an album this year.

Can we get a third? I’d love another opportunity to remind anybody listening what a shitbag he is.

2. As a reminder, I reference Pitchfork frequently because I typically disagree with them. If I like something, they hate it; and vice-versa. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve agreed with their review.

I feel like it’s important to call them on their shit. So please do not take the inclusion of their criticism as a ‘piling on’ of any sort — I just thought it was interesting that I felt that the song where it seemed most applicable was “Hurt Feelings”.