Halsey announces “confessional concept album”, ‘The Great Impersonator’: “I spent half my life being someone else”

28 August, 2024

Halsey

Halsey has unveiled details of her new “confessional concept album” called ‘The Great Impersonator’.

Yesterday (August 27), the singer-songwriter, who goes by she/them pronouns, revealed details of the album on social media.

In a video trailer released alongside the announcement, Halsey can be heard reflecting on their health, after being diagnosed with Lupus SLE and a rare T-cell lymphoproliferative disorder in 2022.

“When you get sick like that, you start thinking about ways it could’ve all been different,” Halsey says in the video.

They continue: “What if I debuted in the early 2000s? The ’90s? The ’80s? The ’70s? Am I still Halsey every time? In every timeline, do I still get sick? Do I become a mom?

“I spent half my life being someone else, I never stopped to ask myself: if it all ended right now, is this the person you’d be proud to leave behind? Is it even you?”

No tracklist or further details about the album have yet been shared, but it has already been previewed by three songs. In the teaser video, Halsey hints that it will visit various decades of musical styles and eras.

The album was first teased with ‘The End’ back in June and later the Britney Spears-sampling ‘Lucky’ the following month.

This month, Halsey debuted the album’s third track, ‘Lonely Is The Muse’.

At Hungarian festival Sziget, Halsey played ‘Lucky’, for the first time ever. Recently, they said they were “really nervous” about clearing the sample on the song, and said they “shared everything” with Spears throughout the creative process.

It came after Spears appeared to claim that she felt “harassed, violated and bullied” by the song’s video. In a since-deleted post, Spears threatened legal action against Halsey and called her “downright cruel”, however, later walked back on the statement on X/Twitter, writing: “Fake news !!! That was not me on my phone !!! I love Halsey and that’s why I deleted it!!!”

In response, Halsey said: “I love Britney!!!! I always have and always will you were the first person who ever made me realise what it means to feel inspired. And you continue to inspire me everyday.”

Halsey has also recently opened up about their “complex feelings” after suffering a miscarriage during a show in 2015.

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