Halsey (singer)

Ashley Nicolette Frangipane (IPA: FRAN-jih-PAH-nee; born September 29, 1994), known professionally as Halsey ( HAWL-zee), is an American singer-songwriter and actress. Noted for her distinctive singing voice, she has received several accolades including three Billboard Music Awards, a Billboard Women in Music Award, an American Music Award, and three Grammy Award nominations. She was on Time's annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2020.

Halsey was born and grew up in Central Jersey. Gaining attention from self-released music on social media platforms, she signed with Astralwerks in 2014 and released her debut extended play (EP), Room 93, in October of that year. Her debut studio album, Badlands (2015), was met with critical and commercial success—debuting at number two on the Billboard 200. It was certified double platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), along with its singles "Colors", "Gasoline" and "New Americana", the latter of which became her first entry on the US Billboard Hot 100 at number 60.

In 2016, Halsey co-performed with the Chainsmokers on their single "Closer", which topped the charts in the US and ten countries, also receiving a 14× platinum certification from the RIAA. Her second studio album, Hopeless Fountain Kingdom (2017) embodied a more "radio-friendly" sound and debuted atop the Billboard 200, while its singles "Now or Never" and "Bad at Love", both entered the top 20 of the Billboard Hot 100—the latter peaked within the top five. Her 2018 single, "Eastside" (with Benny Blanco and Khalid), found continued success and peaked within the top ten. Later that year, she was moved to Capitol Records.

Halsey's third studio album, Manic (2020), became her best selling album worldwide. Its lead single, "Without Me" topped the Billboard Hot 100, received a diamond certification from the RIAA, and yielded her furthest commercial success as a lead artist. Her fourth album, If I Can't Have Love, I Want Power (2021), moved away from her previous sound in favor of a darker industrial sound to generally positive reception. She then parted ways with Capitol in 2023, following a controversy surrounding the release of her non-album single, "So Good" the year prior. After signing with Columbia Records, Halsey's fifth studio album The Great Impersonator followed in 2024. By 2020, Billboard reported that her albums had sold over one million combined units, and received over six billion streams in the United States. Aside from music, she has been involved in suicide prevention awareness, sexual assault victim advocacy, and racial justice protests.

Early life

Ashley Nicolette Frangipane was born in Edison, New Jersey, on September 29, 1994, the daughter of Nicole and Chris Frangipane. Her parents dropped out of college after her mother discovered that she was pregnant with her. Halsey's mother works as an emergency medical technician (EMT), while her father manages a car dealership. Her mother is of Italian and Hungarian descent, whereas her father is African American with some small Irish ancestry. She has two younger brothers named Sevian and Dante. She played the violin, viola, and cello, before taking up playing the guitar when she was 14 years old. She grew up listening to Alanis Morissette, Justin Bieber, and Brand New. Throughout her childhood, her family moved frequently, as her parents worked many jobs. By the time she became a teenager, she had enrolled in six schools. She was raised Catholic.

Frangipane was bullied at school, and a suicide attempt at the age of 17 led to her being hospitalized for nearly three weeks. Following this, she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, with which her mother was also diagnosed. Halsey began using drugs soon after, saying her bipolar disorder caused her to become an "unconventional child". At age 17, she became romantically involved with a man who was 24 and resided near Halsey Street station in Brooklyn, from which she took her stage name. She said, "That's where I first start[ed] writing music and where I started to feel like I was a part of something bigger than my town in middle of nowhere New Jersey. Halsey is kind of like a manifestation of all the exaggerated parts of me, so it's like an alter ego." In 2012, she graduated from Warren Hills Regional High School in Washington, New Jersey.

After graduating, Frangipane enrolled in the Rhode Island School of Design, but she withdrew due to financial hardship and instead attended community college. She eventually dropped out of community college and was kicked out by her parents, who she said "just didn't agree with a lot of things about [her]". Soon after, she lived in a basement in Lower Manhattan with a group of "degenerate stoners" she knew through her then-boyfriend. When she was not living there, she occasionally lived in one of New York's many homeless shelters, and she considered prostitution as a way to make money. When describing this period of her life, she has said, "I remember one time I had $9 in my bank account, and bought a four-pack of Red Bull and used it to stay up overnight over the course of two or three days, because it was less dangerous to not sleep than it was to sleep somewhere random and maybe get raped or kidnapped." She would occasionally stay with her maternal grandmother during this time.

Career

2012–2014: Career beginnings and Room 93

Frangipane started writing music when she was 17, and in 2012, she began posting videos to social media sites such as YouTube and Kik, and in particular Tumblr, under the username se7enteenblack. She became known for a parody of Taylor Swift's song "I Knew You Were Trouble", inspired by Swift's relationship with Harry Styles. She then wrote a follow-up song about their relationship, which was posted online in early 2013. In early 2014, Frangipane went to a party and met a "music guy" who asked her to collaborate on a song with him because he liked her voice. The result, a song about her ex-boyfriend, titled "Ghost", was posted by Frangipane on SoundCloud several weeks after it was recorded. Within hours, the song gained online popularity and she was subsequently contacted by several record labels, with the song eventually charting and going on radio. She signed with Astralwerks, feeling that they gave her more creative freedom than other labels that contacted her.

Following this, Frangipane played numerous acoustic shows in different cities under several stage names. She chose Halsey as her permanent stage name because it is an anagram of her first name and is also a reference to the Halsey Street station of the New York City Subway in Brooklyn, a place where she spent a lot of time as a teenager. She also stated Halsey was the most popular name she used. Having written poems for years, Halsey began writing more serious songs as a way to promote them. Music became her "confessional approach" and a form of therapy after the difficult life she had endured. Halsey began touring with The Kooks in August 2014 and performed various original songs. She released her debut extended play, Room 93, on October 27, 2014. The EP charted in the lower regions of the US Billboard 200 and at number three on the Top Heatseekers chart.

2015–2016: Badlands

Halsey then began work on her debut studio album and performed songs from it at South by Southwest in 2015, where she was the most tweeted-about performer of the night. She embarked on a co-headlining tour with Young Rising Sons in March, and in June, she became the opening act for Imagine Dragons during the North American leg of their Smoke + Mirrors Tour (2015).

Halsey's debut studio album, Badlands, was released on August 28, 2015. She said Badlands is a concept album about a dystopian future society known as "The Badlands", which was a metaphor for her mental state at the time and that each song meant something different to her. She wrote all of the songs on the album when she was 19, and the album has a number of producers, including then-boyfriend, Norwegian producer Lido. The album was described by Halsey as not having a "proper radio hit". It received positive reviews from music critics, with Joe Levy of Rolling Stone citing Halsey as a "new Tumblr popstar with a knack for sticky imagery". Badlands debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 albums chart in the US, selling 115,000 copies in its first week, of which 97,000 were pure album sales. The album found success in several other countries, including Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, where the album debuted in the top three. It was further promoted by Halsey's Badlands Tour (2015–16), and her spot as the opening act for select dates of The Weeknd's The Madness Fall Tour (2015).