Halsey
By: Mia Mantilla
Ashley Frangipane, known by her stage name, Halsey, is a twenty-three year old Grammy nominated singer songwriter with two RIAA platinum certified albums. Halsey is not only an anagram of her first name but is also a reference to Halsey Street station located in Brooklyn, NY. She is the daughter of an African American father and an Italian woman. She gained her start in the music industry in the year 2012 when she began posting covers on YouTube. Throughout the years when she was living with her friends in a basement, she found music to be therapeutic. She played acoustic shows in different cities, but never under her birth name. She wanted to draw attention to her poetry and in order to achieve this, she converted her poems into songs. When she was seventeen years old, she attended a party and there she met a producer who was willing to collaborate on a song. This song would later appear on her EP, Room 93, titled "Ghost." She posted it on SoundCloud a few weeks after it was recorded and it rapidly gained popularity. She was contacted by several record labels and later signed to Astralwerks Records. She released her album Room 93 in October of 2014, which charted in the lower end of the Billboard 200. She also performed in a music festival called South by Southwest, and she was the most tweeted about performer of the night. During this time, she toured with bands such as The Kooks and Imagine Dragons as an opening act. In 2015, Halsey released her debut album, Badlands. She described it as a concept album, surrounding a dystopian society which represented her mental state at the time, as she was diagnosed with having Bipolar Disorder. She writes about the disorder throughout the album, but in the song "Control," she claims she does not know if she or her demons are in control of her body. The album debuted at #2 in the Billboard 200, selling almost 100,000 copies in the first week. In April 2017, Badlands was certified platinum by the RIAA. The four promotional singles that were released are all certified gold by the RIAA. In 2016, she collaborated on the song "Closer" with The Chainsmokers. The song topped the Billboard 100 charts and received several awards, including a Grammy nomination for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance. Today, "Closer" is certified seven times platinum by the RIAA. Her sophomore album, Hopeless Fountain Kingdom, is another concept album which follows the story of two star crossed lovers. Within the first week of its release, Hopeless Fountain Kingdom surpassed Badlands' opening week sales and topped the Billboard 200 charts. "Now or Never," a single from Halsey's second album, managed to reach #17 on the Billboard 100 charts. The another single released from Hopeless Fountain Kingdom, "Bad At Love," peaked at #5 on the Billboard 100 charts. The same year, she embarked on her biggest tour to date.
In January of 2018, Halsey attended the Women’s March and presented a poem to the public. In the poem, she writes about her experiences being sexually assaulted and how every woman she meets seems to have a story similar to hers. She concludes the poem with a message that reminds women to speak up for other women whose voice has been stripped away in society. Although she is a celebrity, she openly speaks about her identity and shows genuine self acceptance. She decides to speak out about topics that are important to her, whether that’s through her music, social media, or her live performances. She is a strong woman who is not afraid to share her personal experiences during times where the media attempts to hide negative things. Halsey uses her platform to give those who are not fortunate to have a voice a say in society, and this greatly impacted my decision on who to invite to The Dinner Party 2018.
"It's 2009 and I'm 14 and I'm crying
Not really sure where I am but I'm holding the hand of my best friend Sam
In the waiting room of a Planned Parenthood
The air is sterile and clean, and the walls are that not grey, but green
And the lights are so bright they could burn a whole through the seam of my jeans
My phone is buzzing in the pocket
My mom is asking me if I remembered my keys 'cause she's closing the door and she needs to lock it
But I can't tell my mom where I've gone
I can't tell anyone at all
You see, my best friend Sam was raped by a man that we knew 'cause he worked in the after-school program
And he held her down with her textbook beside her
And he covered her mouth and he came inside her
So now I'm with Sam, at the place with a plan, waiting for the results of a medical exam
And she's praying she doesn't need an abortion, she couldn't afford it
And her parents would, like, totally kill her
~Excerpt of Halsey's Women's March poem "A Story Like Mine"
Much like most musical artists, Halsey tours around the world’s best known destinations and performs a physically demanding show in arenas, sometimes for consecutive nights in a row. What sets her aside from other musical artists is despite the fact that she has been diagnosed with endometriosis, a disorder in which tissue that typically grows inside the uterus grows outside of the uterus, she powers through the pain and performs a two hour show on stage. In an interview, the singer states that the stress and strain of having endometriosis felt enhanced while touring. At the time she had been misdiagnosed countless times and was unable to correctly take care of the illness. This caused touring to prohibit her from maintaining a healthy lifestyle.
Hours before Viva Fest 2015, a music festival in which Halsey performed in, she unfortunately miscarried. Since she was a rising musical artist, she was encouraged by her team to perform against her own will because Viva Fest would give her publicity. After her miscarriage, she decided she did not want her chronic illness to negatively affect her career's success and she sought proper treatment. Halsey now strives to normalize the illness by publicly speaking about her experience on social media and interviews, rather than attempting to hide it.
Both above and two the left are pictures of Halsey's runner for The Dinner Party 2018.
My vision for the plate was for it to be an homage to Halsey’s most recent album, Hopeless Fountain Kingdom. Hopeless Fountain Kingdom is Halsey’s interpretation of Shakespeare’s work, Romeo and Juliet, and her experience with a relationship of one like Romeo and Juliet's. I chose to paint the plate a dark shade of red because the main color scheme in her album involves red. In the album, Halsey takes on the role of Luna, who represents Romeo, and her lover, Solis, represents Juliet. Like in the play, there are two houses, both alike in dignity. Luna’s house, Aureum, is similar to the one of Romeo’s, Montague. The people who are in the Aureum house are typically reckless, risky, fearless, and honest. They choose to follow their hearts rather than their minds and carry many emotions. Because Halsey classified herself in the Aureum house, I chose to have their distinct symbol, the bee, be the main focus point of the plate. Angelus, Solis' house which represents Capulet, is symbolized by angel wings. A person who is in Angelus is typically repectful of authority, loyal, submissive, honorable, and frequently chooses their mid over their heart. I chose to have the angel wing, located on the left side of the plate, to be there to not only represent Solis, but also Luna. Luna and Solis, or the sun and the moon, are star-crossed lovers that could never be together because they are from two different worlds. I wanted to depict their relationship and how different their characters are. Hopeless Fountain Kingdom is also described as a type of purgatory people go to where they are "too bad for heaven, yet too good for hell."
The bee is three dimensional, and it is resting on a square decorated by pictures of the bisexual flag. A major reason why I chose Halsey as my guest to The Dinner Party 2018 is because of the lack of LGBTQ+ women in Judy Chicago’s "The Dinner Party", hence why I added the bisexual flag. The wave in the center of the plate is meant to be an acknowledgement of her debut album Badlands. In the song titled "Hurricane," she describes herself as being a hurricane and being her own independent person. While watching her perform live on October 14, 2017, during the song "Hurricane," she says to the crowd, "This song is a reminder that you do not belong to anybody but yourself." Before she even began singing the song on stage, she says if there was one thing we could take home from the show, it would be that lesson. The butterflies on the left hand side of the plate are actual confetti pieces from her show that night that fell during the song "Alone." Each time I attend a concert, I make it a priority to collect any confetti that fell that night as a reminder of that night. The runner that compliments my plate is decorated by tarot cars. Tarot cards are a major symbol that frequently occur in the music videos of songs off Hopeless Fountain Kingdom. For singles released from Hopeless Fountain Kingdom, Halsey has specific tarot cards assigned to them. On the runner, the tarot cards for the songs, from left to right, are, "Strangers," "Eyes Closed," "Now or Never," and "Alone." In the center of the tarot cards is a tarot card of Halsey herself, with themes from both her albums Badlands and Hopeless Fountain Kingdom.
Above is Bad At Love, Halsey's RIAA platinum certified singles off her album, Hopeless Fountain Kingdom.
Above is "A Story Like Mine," the poem Halsey read at the Women's March 2018.
On May 24, 2018, Halsey publicly announced that her album Hopeless Fountain Kingdom has officially been certified platinum by the RIAA.