The explosive singer-songwriter behind some of today’s biggest pop hits, Halsey rose to the top with a one-of-a-kind genre-blending style of electro-alt-pop-rock. Their sound set them apart, but so did their unapologetic attitude and their desire to just be Halsey. So who is Halsey, and how did they become the single-named artist they are today?
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Behind the Name
Born Ashley Frangipane, the singer didn’t become Halsey overnight. An alter-ego in a way, Halsey instead seemed to always exist within them.
“Halsey is an anagram of my first name, Ashley,” they told Nylon in a 2014 interview, but the story behind their stage name goes deeper than just letter play.
“I grew up in New Jersey, and I would always take the train into New York, and I was getting into a lot of trouble,” they continued. “When I was 17, I was seeing a guy who was 24 and he lived on Halsey Street in Brooklyn. That’s where I first started writing music and where I started to feel like I was a part of something bigger than my town in the 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,” they ultimately summed it up. However, an interview in 2020 with Cosmopolitan revealed an even deeper truth behind their chosen moniker.
“People hear about me and they want to paint my story as a rags-to-riches tale, but that’s not true,” they told the outlet, detailing their journey to success as a “slow and painful” one. They explained feeling so proud of their teenage self, the blossoming singer who released the 2015 debut, Badlands. “I had all the odds against me,” they said. “I didn’t know anybody in the music industry. I was from New Jersey. I had no fucking money, and there was no way I was going to college.
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“I think I had the foresight to know that being me wasn’t enough,” they said of the real reason for the name change. “I had to become somebody completely different. At the time, I felt that Ashley didn’t deserve to be famous and successful because she wasn’t that special, but if I made Halsey, maybe she could be.” They explained changing their name gave them the “opportunity to create a new persona that wasn’t bound by the expectations I had for myself or the limitations that others placed on me because of my upbringing or my socioeconomic situation.”
They added, “I created a person, and she could do everything. There was no way that Ashley was going to become a king, but I made a new name for myself and took her to paranormal, supernatural heights.”
Photo courtesy Capitol Records