- 2020-01-17
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MUSIC
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Donate to support families affected by the crisis in Ukraine ➔ Halsey Releases New Album “Manic”: Streaming
American singer-songwriter Halsey released her third studio album “Manic” on January 17th. It is her first LP in three years.
The album comprises of 16-track featuring guest appearances from Dominic Fike, Alanis Morissette and Suga of BTS.
Also British singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran contributed the song “Still Learning”. In addition, Billie Eilish's brother Finneas O'Connell, aka Finneas contributed and produced “I Hate Everybody”.
On the first track “Ashley”, she samples a bit of movie dialogue: “I’m just a fucked-up girl looking for my own piece of mind. Don’t assign me yours.” It’s from the film “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”, spoken by the manic, pixie dream-girl heroine Clementine.
Last year, she said of the album, “Writing this album has been a lesson in forgiving myself. In being proud of myself and kind to myself despite how much this world is designed to make you hate yourself. I hope when it’s finally in your hands it brings you that same peace. It’s not a quiet peace. It’s a loud one.”- J4C8aMqF0vg
She explained the inside story behind some of the album’s most personal songs.
“Ashley”
“Starting the album with my real name is a comfortable entry point for people, like saying, 'Hey, I'm still here, but I'm going to take you down on a different journey right now.' A lot of this album was written as I became more aware of my mortality. Sometimes I'm on top of the world and I've never felt better in my life. Other days I'm like, 'If I keep doing this, I'm going to die.’ This song is an introduction and a warning: It’s saying, ‘Here's this album that I had to cut myself open to make, and will continue to cut myself open to tour, promote, and explain, but I don't know how many more of these you're going to get.'”
“Forever ... (is a long time)”
"Every album of mine has what we call a trio: three songs smack in the middle that serve as a transition and are meant to be listened to in succession. On Manic, it’s 'Forever ... (is a long time),' 'Dominic's Interlude,' and 'I HATE EVERYBODY.’ On this song, I'm falling in love. The instrumental is major, all these beautiful twinkling tones, and birds are singing, everything’s sweet, it's Cinderella. And then I start getting in my own head. The piano comes in and it's this stream-of-consciousness train of thought that modulates from major to minor to show my mood shifting from optimistic to anxious. And now I'm sabotaging this relationship and feeling paranoid, this is going to be bad. And then [singer-songwriter] Dominic [Fike, on "Dominic's Interlude"] tells me I’d better go tell my man he’s got bad news coming.”
“I HATE EVERYBODY”
“At some point I kind of put my foot down and was like, ‘Here's what we're not going to do is make all my music about whoever I'm dating. This album is about me. I should matter enough on my own. I shouldn't be desirable because some rock star you think is cool thinks I’m desirable. That's not what this is anymore, and it never should have been.' But when you're young, your insecurities get the best of you sometimes, and 'I HATE EVERYBODY’ is about that. It’s thinking, ‘Well, they respect his opinion, so if he likes me, they will too.' Whoa. Wrong. No-no-no. This should be about me.”
“Finally”
“I was like, ‘I need a wedding song. I need a first dance song.’ I wrote it at home in my living room at two in the morning when I was dating Dom [YUNGBLUD]. I’d been thinking about the night we met—I had told the story so many times and every time it got more romantic—and realized I’d never written a love song before, not one without a punchline. And it’s just a very nice, sweet song. At first, I was kind of like, eh… It wasn’t crazy enough. But I sent it to a couple friends, who said it was the best song I’d ever written. I was like, ‘What? It’s just me and a guitar.’ And they were like, ‘Yeah, that’s the point.’”
“Alanis’ Interlude”
“A big flex. The biggest flex. I wrote her a letter and she was nine months pregnant, maybe a little less, and I tried to tell her what an irrevocable impact she’d had on my life. I told her I would never have been brave enough to say the things I’ve said if she hadn’t said them first, and that I was making a record about all the important parts of me and I couldn’t imagine making it without her. And she said yes. The interludes represent different relationships in my life: Dom represents brotherly love and Alanis represents sexual and professional empowerment.”
“killing boys”
“It’s about being so enraged that you’re like, I'm going to break into his house, go in his room, sit him down, and be like, 'Listen, motherf**ker, you're going to talk to me right now.' Like, I'm going to wear a black hoodie. My friend's going to drive. It's pseudo based on a real story of when I actually did bust into somebody's house looking for answers about something. It was back in a time when I was really manic and would be like, 'No, my only option is to go over there and cause a scene.' It goes: 'I climb up to the window and I break in the glass/But I stop 'cause I don't want to Uma Thurman your ass.' It’s satirical, but I’m mad.”
“More”
"I've been really open about my struggles with reproductive health, about wanting to freeze my eggs and having endometriosis and things like that. For a long time, I didn't think that having a family was something I was going to be able to do, and it’s very, very important to me. Then one day my OB-GYN tells me it's looking like I maybe can, and I was so moved. It felt like this ascension into a different kind of womanhood. All of a sudden, everything is different. I'm not going to go tour myself to death because I have nothing else to do and I'm overcompensating for not being able to have this other thing that I really want. Now, I have a choice. I've never had a choice before. Lido [the producer Peder Losnegård] and I built the fading instrumental at the end of the song to sound like a sonogram, like you were hearing the sounds from inside a womb. It's one of the most special songs I've ever made.”-
Halsey will launch the Manic World Tour in support of the new album at WiZink Center in Madrid, Spain on February 6th. The tour takes place in Europe, Asia and North America with a total of 48 shows. Pale Waves, Chanmina, CHVRCHΞS, Omar Apollo, blackbear and PVRIS will support the tour. Learn more about tour dates, click here.
Before that, she will be the musical guest on Saturday Night Live on January 25th, the first show of 2020. Star Wars star Adam Driver will host. - source : Rolling Stone
