ARTIST RESEARCH

Halsey (Ashley Nicolette Frangipane) is an American singer who has released three albums
since 2014. In all of these albums, she has created a world and a character for the songs
within the albums. The first of the albums is called Room 93, which was followed a year later
by Badlands. This has led to pre-existing Halsey fans to conspire as they have made
theories that the Room 93 is a place in Badlands, which could lead to the potential of
Hopeless Fountain Kingdom also being within Badlands. This leads to Halsey gaining
popularity as people are trying to find links between the characters in each album to see if
they all add up to a bigger plot. However, Halsey has openly discussed that the love interest
in most of the songs from all albums are based off of her ex, Zach Meritt.

In her newest album, HFK, she has used strategic marketing in order to create a buzz within
her pre-existing fans, who then posted across social media about these tactics, which gained
the attention of newer fans and got them involved. As opposed to a regular album cover
release, Halsey tweeted When Im ready for you to have the album cover, Im gonna make
you find it; three weeks after this tweet, she had a world-wide scavenger hunt for nine gun-
shaped USBs containing the album art. These USBs were hidden in places related to
Shakespeare (for example The Shakespeare \Bridge in LA) or in fountains. This then was
revealing to the fans not only the album art, but hinting towards the fact that the story behind
this album was based on Romeo and Juliet.

The first reveal of the Romeo and Juliet theme of the album was shown when Halsey
released the video for Now Or Never, which had multiple intertextual references to the 1996
version of Romeo and Juliet; including Hawaiian shirts, neon lights and lots of flashing of
guns.

Growing up, Halsey did not have an easy life. She was diagnosed with bipolar disorder at
seventeen after a suicide attempt, followed by her becoming reliant on drugs due to
beginning a relationship with a heroin addict which soon led to her being kicked out by her
parents. Halsey 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, demonstrating how rough it was for her early life. However,
this bad period of her life is what inspired her first two albums, namely Badlands. This may
have been the reason for both the lack of popularity she gained as the songs were not radio
friendly but also for how quickly she built her audience as she spoke out about taboo topics.

Halsey is signed to Astralwerks, a sub company of Capitol Records, and Virgin EMI.
However, she released her EP and first music video for Ghosts independently. When she
released Ghosts on Soundcloud, the song gained popularity within a matter of hours and she
was contacted by many record companies but signed with Astralwerks as they gave her
more creative freedom.

She has been nominated and won multiple awards, including Billboard Music Award for Top
Collaboration (2017) and Billboard Music Award for Top Dance/Electronic Song.