Halsey (pseudonym of Ashley, her real name) has always somehow fascinated me. If I have to be honest, I liked her more for her personality rather than for her songs, but it is also true that I had never really listened to her music. I started to pay more attention to her when I was gifted with tickets for the Manic tour. Manic is a wonderful album: introspective and unexpected, it is nothing but a journey inside the mind of a bipolar person going through their manic phase. Anyway, Manic is not the album I’d like to talk about.
Today I want to talk about Badlands, because I think that it is one of the most underrated albums out there: it deserves more attention and recognition. The preface of Badlands recites as follows: "This city is disgusting, a corpse of what it used to be. The people are filthy, gluttonous, ruled by the power exchange of sex from the hands of the proletariat to the bourgeoisie”. As already suggested by the title, the album presents a different and corrupt reality, dominated and controlled by rich men convinced that money empowers them to do whatever they want with anything and anyone. “Castle” is the opening track of the album, appearing as some sort of poetic statement. On a haunting and psychedelic beat, Halsey makes it clear that no one can intimidate her or keep her from claiming the throne of a kingdom which belongs to her. There are no dirty looks nor men able to stop her. On the contrary, the criticism and presumption given by the society allow her to understand and appreciate the diversity that distinguishes her in a metropolis of people who all look the same ("Hold Me Down"). A concept claimed again in songs like "New Americana" - a hymn to diversity among noisy drum rolls which seem to anticipate a social revolution - and "Gasoline". Love songs are also present on the album, but don’t think that they’re anything near to what we’re used to hear on pop radio: in Badlands love exists as a secret sexual passion ("Strange Love"), as addiction ("I Walk the Line") or as persecution ("Haunting"). While listening to "Coming Down", a less gloomy atmosphere is perceived in a song where it feels like we were in a car on a rainy evening, with the windshield wipers serving as the main beat while Halsey tells us about a boy with divine features (but yet so human with "his head between my thighs"). "Colors" turns out to be the only love song that fits more the typical stereotypes of the pop scene (at least in terms of melody). At a second listening, though, you can clearly feel Halsey's touch. The song is about a deep and too-good-to-be-true-kind of love: beautiful and lively as blue, sad and nostalgic as grey. "You were red, and you liked me because I was blue / But you touched me, and suddenly I was a lilac sky / Then you decided purple just wasn't for you": a harrowing - and brilliant - metaphor to indicate the premature end of a sincere love. Although "Colors" seems to be the track where Halsey strips her feelings down the most, "Control" remains the true personal track on the album: between sinister and gloomy sounds, Halsey opens up about her bipolar disorder, revealing how she herself is frightened by her own demons.
Halsey has done a great job with this album. The production behind every single song is unique and peculiar, and I would recommend listening through the instrumental of each track to truly understand and appreciate the album. The contrast between proletariat and bourgeoisie is clear in the lyrics, which are at times refined and elegant, at times rougher and cruder. Even more, it’s as if Halsey wanted to tell us something. After taking us into a broken and dark reality, the hidden meaning might be that this "disgusting" world - to use her own words - is not so bad if you learn how to swim in a sea of sharks. The true meaning, though, could be even deeper. Listening to songs like “New Americana”, “Gasoline” or “Hurricane” it seems like this album is meant to be an anchor to tie to for all the outsiders who feel alone in a society where everybody looks the same.
Whatever Badlands' purpose is, one thing is certain: with this album Halsey has created (or maybe simply described) a parallel and marginal world where restrictions and rules are abolished (or anyway violated), plunging us into a dark reality from which she comes out as the winning queen, just like anticipated in the opening track of the album.
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