Singer-songwriter Halsey dropped their highly anticipated fifth studio album, “The Great Impersonator,” on Oct. 25. Eccentrically honest, Halsey channels famous musical personas to confront personal truths and the turmoil of their present. Artists like Stevie Nicks and David Bowie define this crafty record.
Leading up to the album’s release, Halsey shared their impersonations of musical artists across genres and time that have defined and influenced her style on this album. Histrionics run through the fiber of this record, and every gut-wrenching truth is a performance. The delivery of their sonic diversity across tracks mimics the style of her inspirations, as seen in the substance of her songwriting.
In refusing to commit to a personal identity for this record, this work might be Halsey’s most ambitious. Yet, they have an advantage in having distinguished their craft so uniquely that an impersonation concept feels imaginative for her and squarely avoids being seen as derivative.
Well-known in pop culture for playing dress up, to bring that into their music feels like a natural trajectory. The voice behind the facade is frightened, faced with many unknowns regarding Halsey’s health and future. Perhaps emulating artists that they grew up with is a mechanism for navigating these fears.
Life and death are at the heart of their narrative. In their grim opening track, “Only Living Girl in LA,” Halsey contemplates how their celebrity would influence their death, fittingly inspired by Marilyn Monroe. A similar sentiment follows in “Life of the Spider (Draft).” Spitting venom and accusation, Halsey compares their life to a spider’s and how the detested life form is often hunted for a kill, even as it haunts its corner harmlessly. This bitter outlook toward a world that cuts her down, hurts them and isolates them births a feeling to lose yourself in, if only to finally feel understood.
However, the album’s most poignant exploration comes as a trilogy of tracks, titled “Letter to God” but dated across separate years. The first is the most gutting: a child’s plea to God to make them sick in hopes their parents cherish and care for them. The second and third are dated years into the future, filled with regret over their earlier pleas: “If this could all just be an answer to thosе prayers that came delayеd / Because I never would have said it if I knew I’d have to wait / Until the moment I was happy, then it all disintegrates.”
The Joni Mitchell-inspired track “The End” was released ahead of the album in June, accompanied by an Instagram post discussing Halsey’s battle with cancer for the past two years. Wrapped in soft strumming and folksy singing is the helplessness and doom of sickness, the fear of death, and more depressingly, the journey to it. In a piercing chorus, Halsey’s voice is soft and vulnerable in their questions: “If you knew it was the end of the world / Could you love me like a child? / Could you hold me in the dark?”
Is it an honest impersonation of grief if it subscribes solely to hopeless resignation? Halsey knows the answer and embraces the existential anguish that comes with it in grittier songs like “Ego” or in borrowing punk elements from Evanescence for “Lonely is the Muse.” With alternative influences of PJ Harvey and Fiona Apple, Halsey adopts a chilling lower register that drives the point home with songs like “Dog Years” and “Arsonist.” The rage of a whispered threat haunts you and echoes in your ear.
There is a heartfelt side to the record, where the outer world shrinks and the complexities of the smaller, more intimate one take over. A driving consideration of their existentialism is their origin and legacy, which they ponder through rumination over their familial bonds. This thought brings her most amusing impersonation: themself as depicted on their 2015 album “Badlands,” dubbed “Impersonator Halsey.” “Hurt Feelings” is that tribute to the life they led up to their musical debut, on the failings of their parents and the person they used to be.
The past weighs on them, in personal trauma but also through fear of what they might pass onto their own child, an idea they explore in “I Believe in Magic.” In a profound love letter to their son, they voice all their hopes for him and seal it with their best cheers for his future. The maternal reverie then builds their resolve to love her mother more and makes for a deeply emotional ballad, full of complex feelings and familial dynamics.
Through pastiche, experimentation and drama, Halsey looks for their place. Their first album to sport a title track, “The Great Impersonator,” wonders if their story matters. Could their suffering amount to a greater purpose, or is their torment in vain? They once again retreat into themself at the end, unsure of their reception and their perception. They assume a pessimism towards it because hope is an act of bravery for this record. “Hope they spell my name right in the paper,” they sing in agony, leaving unsaid that they hope they are remembered, perhaps even in veneration.
For Halsey, the prospect of death looms even when putting a stopper on the rumination, and their fear for an after hangs in eternal perpetuation. If all self-exploration insists on closure, then “The Great Impersonator” asserts its contention.
Maryam Qazi is an Arts and Entertainment Intern for the fall 2024 quarter. She can be reached at qazimf@uci.edu.
Edited by Alaina Retodo and Jaheem Conley.
