Words To Live By: Halsey
Today, on September 29th, Ashley Frangipane fondly known as Halsey, celebrates her birthday. The young star’s created quite the ripple in the music industry, one that’s simply grown over the years. Halsey’s often defined by her unique husky tone and tackling of weighty issues in her steadily growing catalogue of tracks.
She’s never shied away from expressing herself and wearing her opinions on her sleeve. Be it mental health, the LGBTQ community, politics, love – when she has something to say, you can bet that Halsey’s not going to waste a second of hesitation before putting it out there. While her ideologies do bleed into her songwriting, you also see them everywhere else: on social media, in her interviews, in her little conversations during live stages. And so, we figured we’d do a deep dive into Halsey’s mind and pick out the most poignant words she’s spilled over the years. Some arrive as teachings, some as inspiration – all proving to be unfiltered, bold and genuine.
Photo Credits: Halsey Official Instagram
1. “You can tell if there’s magic in something. When you start it, you want to finish it and you want it to be perfect. If you’re not inspired, and you’re working hard to pull inspiration from somewhere and make a song something it’s not, then it’s very contrived, and I don’t like to write music that’s contrived.”
2. “I don’t want to be ‘Halsey: America’s Sweetheart,’ or ‘Halsey: Bad Girl.’ If you can sum up my career in a clickbait headline, I’ve done something wrong.”
3. “Being bisexual, being bipolar, being biracial – it’s been used to define me, but I am desperate to be indefinable.”
4. “The environment around you shapes who you are. How you handle an emergency, or how you react when someone is rude to you, that’s you.”
5. “We need a feminism that is not negligent of women of color, trans women, queer women. We need a feminism that protects ALL women. Globally.”
6. “Stop comparing yourself to others. You can be the most beautiful rose and some jerk will still say they prefer daisies.”
7. “I wouldn’t trivialize my existence into a hashtag.”
8. “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.”
9. “I wear my personality on my sleeve, for sure, and my look is constantly changing because so am I.”
10. “I wake up every day and think about what I am to other people. What I am to the people I employ, who depend on me to wake up and do my job that day and keep this career going? I think about what I am to the kids who listen to my music and all the other people involved in this project.”
By: Nina Karun
