Halsey - The Great Impersonator

On Halsey’s fifth album, ‘The Great Impersonator’, things get conceptual. What if they had launched a career a decade before, or twenty years before that, even? What would that version of Halsey look like? Conceptual it may be, yes, chameleonic and constantly starting anew, but it also feels like their most concrete, real work. Even when drawing influence from a myriad of musicians who have come before, she is rooted in her current reality - working through the events of the past few years in a way that allows her to shift and channel different energies whenever needed.

Self-aware and experimental, the album begins with what feels like a meandering, desperate diary entry — an urgent attempt to get everything out on paper. ‘Only Living Girl in LA’ eventually builds to heavy percussion that feels like an unleashing. The vocals move from fired-up and angsty on ‘Ego’ to nearly swallowed by the sonics on ‘Hometown’. It is a power struggle of sorts, but one where vocalising these truths and documenting these experiences comes out as champion each time.

‘Letter to God (1983)’ has echoes of Springsteen, and other names come to mind throughout, but those idiosyncrasies Halsey has built through a decade-long career rear their heads again and again. Their voice is as wrought with emotion as ever, even as she effortlessly flips between genres. As she tries on different versions of herself and pushes her musicality in new directions, Halsey seems to find a lifeline in the songs on ‘The Great Impersonator’, and it is one she clings to.