Growing up in the suburbs, I used to listen to punk rock, Brand New, Taking Back Sunday. And no one from my high school listened to it.
— Halsey
I think escapism is something artists write about pretty frequently - it's something everyone can relate to, the concept of wanting something more, wanting to find solace, wanting to have something better.
To be fair, I did come out of nowhere. 'Ghost' was the first song I ever did in a studio, my first time ever cutting a professional vocal.
I was a fan of One Direction when I was 16, but I was also a fan of Bring Me The Horizon and hardcore bands.
I love Kanye West. I think he's a visionary. He's one of those people for whom I separate his personality from his artistry.
I was obsessed with learning about social behaviors. I remember explaining to my mom that kids on my soccer team were fighting because of dyads and triads.
I wear my personality on my sleeve, for sure, and my look is constantly changing because so am I.
When you're a teenage girl, a lot of being pretty has to do with your hair.
I was doing some YouTube covers, and I had a decently popular blog on Tumblr.
If I go out there and am myself, and I do what makes me comfortable and what I think is true to my artistry, and they don't like it, then that's fine. I walk off stage, and I know there's nothing there's nothing I could have done differently.
People around me like me the best when I'm depressed because I'm a bit more passive.
Being bisexual, being bipolar, being biracial - it's been used to define me, but I am desperate to be indefinable.
I cultivated this fan base that I really didn't really understand or appreciate until I put my first headlining tour up for sale. 500- to 1,000-capacity rooms weren't an underplay for me at the time. I'd never done a tour before!
My first album was called 'Badlands,' and it's something that I think I'm most proud of having done in my life.
It's really exciting to see all those people that exist in numbers online translate into tickets and then into faces, handshakes, pictures, stories.
I love Quentin Tarantino; I love Harmony Korine, Larry Clarke.
The hardest thing about writing my second album is that I had 20 years to write my first album.
I was always running off to the city, whether it was Philly or New York, going somewhere where there was something more for me.
I made up 'Badlands'; anything I say, goes. I came to realize I was materializing a metaphor for my mental state.
I put 'Ghost' online hoping to make a couple hundred bucks, but then the next day, I took meetings with five different record companies.
There are conspiracy theorists who think I was crafted in a boardroom. Because I'm so very relatable and so very topical and so very Tumblr.
You don't know fear until it's 7 A.M. and freezing cold on live television, and you're not sure if Justin Bieber is going to kiss you or not.
You can be accessible without catering to an audience.
I'm not going to present myself one way all the time just because it will make me sell best.
If I am who I am, I'm provocative, candid, and androgynous; there's nothing I can do that will make any fan think, 'I didn't expect that from her.'
I'm a human, and I'm multidimensional. If I was the perfect form of anything, I'd be boring. If I was a free spirit all the time, I would be boring; I would lack depth. If I was dark and enigmatic all the time, then I would lack relatability.
The cool thing about my show and me is that I'm a writer, and I'm a writer first if I don't have music.
In one week, I went from being a girl who owed a guy thousands of dollars - my manager Anthony was paying for my outfits, paying for my food; I was sleeping in his parents' basement - to taking meetings with every major label in America. The next morning, I had a record deal and wrote him a cheque to pay back all that money.
I put so much of myself out there and make myself so accessible that sometimes I fear I make myself too accessible.
Being a pop-leaning, female artist, you'd think that I'd have my record company breathing down my neck and trying to control everything I'm doing. Actually, they've just kind of let me take the wheel.
When I was in high school, I was a bad kid and a good student.
I would love to write a screenplay for 'Badlands' one day. I don't think I could ever have the patience to do it; I don't even have the patience to write songs. I write some of the shortest songs ever because I don't have the patience.
Being a musician, people ask you a lot about what musicians inspire you, and there's plenty of musicians that I love and respect, but I think that I'm the most inspired by cinema.
In 2016, makeup has become an incredible passion and hobby for men and women, but it hasn't become mainstream.
In a city, there's more room to be, where in a small town, you have to squish yourself down a little bit. And it's exciting for me to be pursuing a career where I don't have to be small.
I like writing about places, about people and environments. When I create a world, it lets me go in and define the details of that world.
I used to work at a punk venue in Pennsylvania because I wanted to be near music.
Everything that I hate about myself goes away when I was onstage.
I wouldn't trivialize my existence into a hashtag.
I'm a fixer, unfortunately. I'm like, 'Oh, I can fix you.' But it's not just guys I'm dating anymore. It's this entire legion of young girls who tell me they need me to maintain any sort of sanity or peace.
My mom has every issue of 'Billboard' I've ever been in.
I had a crazy life for a teenager. I lived in New Jersey, but I'd go to Vermont for three weeks, join a commune, take pictures with the guy I was dating, come back home, and post photos.
Whether it's writing songs, being on stage, being interviewed, meeting fans - I just try to be myself, which is kind of exhausting because it almost feels like it never shuts off.
I'm a musician with a very unique mental state, I suppose. I'm agoraphobic. I'm scared to leave my house. I haven't been alone in, like, two years. I'm either with my boyfriend or my assistant, my manager or my tour manager. I won't go anywhere by myself; I'm too terrified.
I have this first album that sells more than 100,000 copies in its first week, debuts at number two, goes gold, the single goes platinum, we're doing Madison Square Garden.
Please don't erase my race because I'm white-passing. There is literally nothing I can do about my complexion.
Even if you can't relate to what I'm singing, I hope you can believe in it and see it as something that it is real.
I want to be treated like a musician.
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. I write about people that I know, so I want to portray them and portray myself in a way that is unapologetic.
I consider myself someone who takes a lot of beauty risks, and I've realized what I liar I am. I change my hair a lot, from blue to blonde to bald, but I'm trying to branch out a little more with makeup.
