Half-Year in Review #1: Halsey - Manic
Album release date: January 17, 2020
Halsey is an artist of constant, unresolved friction: between personas, between genres, between artistic ambitions. It would be difficult enough to place her even without her music’s constant struggle to find a comfortable sonic habitat; after all, how many people making number-one hit singles also try to give their albums coherent storylines? Of course, the modern music world has little use for genre barriers and is ready and willing to accept someone who doesn’t quite fit under any one heading; the problem is that Halsey isn’t particularly good at anything she tries. Talented, certainly, and with a voracious appetite for trying out new musical palettes and styles, but despite somewhat interesting singles like Bad at Love or Colors, rarely do Halsey’s immaculate visions for her music ever translate into anything worth hearing. Her third album, Manic, is just begging to be interpreted as an immensely personal statement, an intimate look into herself and her struggles (its title being a reference to Halsey’s bipolar disorder) that would cement Halsey as, if not squarely a ‘pop artist’ or an ‘R&B artist’, at least an artist worth taking seriously. And it is ‘manic’ in at least one sense: the record is constantly shifting from one style or genre to the next on a whim, a volatile arrangement that, intentionally or not, works to confuse the listener as to whether there is any structure or continuity at all. Once again, however, virtually none of these attempts to branch out into alternative sounds end up acceptable, and the resulting experience is saved from becoming a complete, unequivocal disaster only by the grace of Halsey’s experience and innate artistry.
Manic sidelines the tenuous, often confusing plotlines that existed in the background of her first two records in favour of a more detached approach to structuring; a wise decision on paper, at least. A mainstream ‘pop’ artist attempting to put together what amounts to a concept album is admirable, certainly, but the narrative threads too often snapped under the weight of both Halsey’s need to include lyrically dull chart-toppers and her already underwhelming writing abilities. While her pen game has admittedly improved with each release, the artificial hit singles still abound on Manic, with the most egregious example being Without Me: a deeply intimate ballad that embodies a standard late-2010s pop song in the worst possible way. Underproduced electopop minimalism clashes with a tepid trap beat as Halsey croons in mourning of a relationship, any sympathy she could have garnered thoroughly ruined by the garish instrumental and one of the most anticlimactic hooks ever put to record. According to Halsey, it was her own decision and not her label’s to both include Without Me on Manic and exclude the much more impressive single Nightmare from the tracklist; if that is true, consider it yet another bad idea to add to the list that comprises most of this album. The second single Graveyard suffers from similar issues as the first, though the subtler production is much easier to ignore this time around. The song opens with a gently plucked guitar melody which slowly fades into an understated electronic ambience supported by clapping percussion; while it centers around similar themes as Without Me, its elements feel much more harmonious in their purpose, even if the lyrics are still nothing to write home about.
Now that the manufactured hits are over and done with, however, Halsey gets to let her aural imagination run wild, and the results are rarely even tolerable in their oddity. Cuts such as You should be sad and Finally // beautiful stranger are acoustic ballads that attempt to center Halsey’s vocals and lyricism, with mixed results: the latter in particular is a disgustingly saccharine, self-described ‘wedding song’, completely awful in both concept and execution. The former track takes after Without Me in its castigation of Halsey’s ex-boyfriend (“No, you’re not half the man you think that you are/And you can’t fill the hole inside of you with money, drugs, and cars”), but between her warbling vocals and the appalling country influence may actually be even less listenable; in any case, that the two essentially cover the same lyrical ground makes their simultaneous appearance on Manic inexcusable. The best example of Halsey’s experimentation going over well is 3am, an alt-rock exploration outside her sonic comfort zone that finds Halsey attempting to drink away the pains of loneliness and a need for social validation. The song’s mixing could use some polishing, but overall the aesthetic and Halsey’s performance mesh incredibly well; as depressing as it is, Halsey is usually at her best when she turns her sardonic wit inwards: “Know that my identity’s always getting the best of me/I’m the worst of my enemies/And I don’t really know what to do with me”.
Forever … (is a long time) starts out soft, pleasant, and utterly boring, but the piano interlude around the halfway point lets the song modulate to a minor key before Halsey’s voice reenters, now heavily distorted and abruptly accompanied by warped electronics as her parting words imply a cynical self-sabotage of her relationship: “‘Cause I could never hold a perfect thing and not demolish it”. This outro also represents one of the few times Halsey truly takes a risk with the record’s sound; it’s a shame she doesn’t fully commit, instead leaving it as another tantalizing example of untapped potential. Most of the album’s brightest moments are actually quite austere and low-key; the closer 929 is perhaps the most laudable, a self-deprecating stream-of-consciousness that almost sounds like spoken word at points. The closest reference point is probably Kanye West’s I Thought About Killing You, the blend of singing, rapping, and beat poetry that opens his 2018 album ye (funnily enough, another record concerning its artist’s struggles with bipolar disorder). Like Kanye, Halsey is painfully honest about the absurdity of her mental state (“And I remember the names of every single kid I’ve met/But I forget half the people who I’ve gotten in bed”) and her desire for self-love (“I’ve got a long way to go until self-preservation”), yet despite the closing declaration of “I’m still looking for my salvation”, the album’s coda is appreciably optimistic in tone, though whether it has earned that closure is still debatable.
Despite her obvious artistic flair, to write off Halsey as yet another alt-pop chart personality would be easy enough were it not for one thing: Alone, a seemingly innocuous track off her 2017 sophomore album hopeless fountain kingdom and a moment of singular brilliance in the fledgling artist’s discography. Between the masterful use of sampling, the incredibly vibrant production, and an explosive chorus, the retro electropop banger is miles better than anything else Halsey has ever done, and makes it even more frustrating that she insists on such grand concepts and expansive theming at the expense of the music itself. In theory, taking a break from the ambiguously defined Halsey-verse to make an isolated record of heartbreak, doubt, and eventual catharsis is a great idea; in practice, Manic suffers from many of the same flaws that plagued Halsey’s previous albums. At this point, no amount of blatant talent or perceived potential can obscure the unattractive production and regrettable lyricism that ruin far too many promising ideas; if Halsey wants to maintain the same level of intrigue with which many have followed her career up to this point, something on the journey from thought to pen to studio must change, and drastically so.
4.5/10
Favourite Tracks: 929, clementine, 3am
A/N: Half-Year in Review is a nostalgic look back at certain albums from the first half of 2020 that may have fallen by the wayside for one reason or another. Alternatively, just consider this a way to review certain notable releases that I couldn’t get to at the time for whatever reason, but still felt were worth talking about at length.