The Stunning Transformation Of Halsey

Halsey found fame differently than other stars. It used to be that in order to get a record contract and become a famous artist, you had to catch the attention of a bigwig exec who would champion you and make you a star. But that was before social media, which has completely changed the game when it comes to who can get famous — and how. Such was definitely the case for Halsey, who ascended into celebrity thanks to her social media savvy, rendering her a bona fide pop star.

But Halsey wasn't always Halsey, as she was born Ashley Nicolette Frangipane, the child of two blue-collar parents in the state of New Jersey. It was from these humble origins that Halsey emerged, finding solace and refuge in the arts and becoming a brand thanks to her creativity and talent.

So what else is there to know about Halsey, who's an open book about almost everything? How has she been shaped by her life experiences, and how has she changed since she was a little girl? This is the stunning transformation of Halsey.

Neither of Halsey's parents had jobs in creative industries, but that didn't stop her from being influenced by their passions and talents. For one, her pierced and tattooed mother would talk at length about her musical interests, which Halsey absorbed like a sponge. Additionally, her father never forgot a face, and would remember each and every one of his customers when he ran into them down the road. "Watching my dad be like that affected me as an artist tremendously," she revealed in an interview with Glamour. "I have met tens of thousands of fans; I don't forget any of them. Ever."

While her father was arguably the more practical parent, it was Halsey's mother who ensured that she got the violin she asked for one Christmas, despite her husband's protests. "We can't hold her back," her mother insisted. "We don't know what she can become." In that case, it's definitely fair to say that Halsey's mother was 100 percent correct. 

When Halsey was 17 years old, she already had a lot on her plate, given her ever-changing address and her difficulties at school. That was also the year that she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, something she shared with her mother — after attempting to take her own life and being committed to a mental hospital. "It was a lot of things happening at once, with a complete lack of direction," she confessed in an interview with Glamour. 

Halsey spent 17 days at a psychiatric facility, and, at some point, she realized that she wanted to live rather than die. But after that, she was put onto Seroquel and, at a later point, lithium, both of which she absolutely hated. "I was throwing up at school," she shared in an interview with Marie Claire. "I spent my whole adolescence medicated."

In retrospect, the experience is something Halsey looks back on without shame, as it's given her both context and wisdom. "Given what I've been experiencing the past couple of years?" she pondered to Glamour. "If I hadn't already had my meltdown, who knows when it would have happened?"

If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).

Unmoored from her parents and finished with her formal education, Halsey decided to try making it as an artist on her own in New York City. But given how expensive it can be to live there, Halsey found herself in a precarious predicament. "I was literally living on the Lower East Side in a f***ing heroin den, like with all of these artists," she recalled in an interview with Glamour. "It was 2014, the last year that New York was kind of bohemian."

While it was a productive time for her, artistically speaking, Halsey's early years in New York were challenging because of her unstable living situation. "Thinking all my friends were going to die and being by myself and being terrified. It was easily the darkest time of my life," she admitted in an interview with The Guardian. "The one thing I was doing was maintaining my persona online. I never let anyone know I didn't have a home." And that, she added, was one thing she did especially right.

After signing with Astralwerks in 2014, Halsey dropped her first full-length album, Badlands, in 2015, which was a semi-autobiographical concept album with a dystopian sci-fi theme. But despite the fact that she was in a very good place artistically, Halsey was struggling with her mental health. "I was in a really, really, really depressed place when I was writing Badlands," she confessed in an interview with Paper magazine. "I wasn't sure how I was gonna escape that mentality because when you're depressed, that becomes your identifier sometimes. You're the depressed girl." 

Although Halsey, of course, didn't want to be depressed, the notion of getting better was also a threat to her identity at the time. "And then the idea of becoming happy — while it's nice — it's scary," she continued. "Because if you become happy, then who do you become? Because who you are is depressed."

Badlands did very well commercially, according to Billboard, which had to have Halsey smiling about her success.

When it comes to Halsey's love life, she's dated a variety of talented artists, such as The 1975 frontman Matty Healy and the musician DJ Lido. But in 2017, Halsey entered into one of her most important relationships to date, as she hooked up with rapper G-Eazy, whom she called the Clyde to her Bonnie due to their strong chemistry. "We both knew right away. We just didn't act on it," she explained in an interview with Marie Claire. "I had just gotten out of a breakup; he just got out of a breakup. We were both, like, at the peak of our careers."

And once the pair did finally make it official, on the heels of performing their hit song "Him and I" together, it was clear that this was love. "I haven't found someone who matches every version of me until him," she continued. "Like, he's my left sneaker. For every version of him, there's a version of me to match."

Sadly, the couple parted ways after about a year, and Halsey broke the news on an Instagram Story that the romance was over (via Billboard). 

If there's one thing that makes Halsey feel more alive than anything else, it's performing her music at concerts in front of her army of fans. "I love playing live shows more than anything in the world," she gushed in a 2017 interview with Vulture. "When I'm not on tour, I'm depressed as f**k. I can't do anything. It's physical, because it's serotonin and adrenaline and dopamine." 

It's not just those feel-good brain chemicals that Halsey thrives on, either. It's the very real love that she gets from her fans, which reminds her that she's an important person to a lot of people. "And it's also emotional because it's validation. It's feeling like I matter. It's feeling like I care about these people and they care about me," she continued. "It's also outrageously arrogant. It's like being a preacher or a dictator or something." We can't blame her — who wouldn't feel better after hearing thousands of people chanting your name and singing your songs back to you?

Halsey has accomplished an awful lot for someone her age, something that is definitely not lost on her. So what comes next for the musician, now that she's a household name with a fat bank account and all of the accolades she could want? "I've played Madison Square Garden. I have a number-one album. I don't have very many bucket-list things left besides carrying a child," she revealed in an interview with Marie Claire. "It's a personal goal and a weird one." We are 100 percent here for this!

In a fortuitous turn of events, Halsey is now closer to this goal, now that her endometriosis is more under control and her doctor said she doesn't need to freeze her eggs. "I was like, 'Wait, what did you just say? Did you just say I can have kids?' It was like the reverse of finding out you have a terminal illness," she gushed in an interview with Rolling Stone. "I called my mom, crying." What a beautiful twist of fate.

The year 2020 was a pretty good one for Halsey. The reason? She released her third studio album, Manic, on January 17, as noted by Capitol Records. It turns out when she was making the album, she was in the midst of one of her manic swings — which, of course, bled into the music. "It's soooooo manic," she revealed in an interview with Rolling Stone. "It's literally just, like, whatever the f**k I felt like making; there was no reason I couldn't make it."

While Halsey's previous albums were both highly conceptual, Manic is a raw look into her innermost thoughts. "There's a lot of exploration of l'appel du vide, which is French for 'the call of the void,'" she continued. "It's that thing in the back of our minds that drives us to outrageous thoughts." For example, the urge you get to run your car off of the road or to jump suddenly from a tall building.

This is the first album Halsey made while in a manic state, and it turned out to serve her well, as Manic was a hit (via Billboard).

While Halsey may be enormously successful as a writer and a musician, she hasn't forgotten where she came from; she knows what it's like to struggle with poverty and homelessness. That's never far from her mind, as Halsey sees people in situations all the time that remind her of her past. "I witness a lot of ... dichotomy living in L.A., because it has some of the most successful, comfortable, richest people, and then some of the absolute most impoverished and displaced and un-homed," she explained on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah.

To that end, Halsey rolled up her sleeves and began volunteering at a resource center for displaced youth struggling with housing and caring for themselves. "I think it's about keeping yourself immersed in your communities and interacting with those people, instead of ... only interacting with people who are of your class or of your race or of your creed," she continued. Now that's practicing what you preach.