In honor of one of my favorite albums turning two recently as well as a tour announcement, I decided to dedicate this post to a discussion of Halsey’s second most recent album. When Manic was released in January of 2020 – shortly followed by a tour announcement – I fell in love. In fact, I recently got a tattoo inspired by the album, and Halsey has the same one. I was already a fan of Halsey’s previous work but her third studio album was my favorite by far. I was thrilled when I got tour tickets and then crushed when the US leg of the tour was cancelled due to COVID. I was particularly devastated because I knew Halsey wanted to start a family and so they probably wouldn’t tour for many years to come. But then, not too long after a pregnancy announcement, she released If I Can’t Have Love I Want Power (sometimes referred to as just “Love and Power“) in August of 2021, replacing my favorite album of theirs. Even more surprising, Halsey announced the Love and Power tour on January 31, 2022, sooner than anyone expected.
The true start of the Manic era was the release of the single Graveyard in September of 2019, but the earliest released song that made it on the album was Without Me, released nearly a year earlier in October 2018. Graveyard was accompanied by a music video featuring Halsey and Euphoria‘s Sydney Sweeney, who are soon to appear in a TV show (The Player’s Table) together. Shortly following was another single, Clementine and its music video featuring Halsey and their brother Sevian Frangipane. In late 2019, Halsey did a dual release of two songs, Finally// beautiful stranger (which also has a music video) and SUGA’s Interlude (featuring BTS). The final single released before the album was You Should Be Sad, and the accompanying music video remains my favorite of Halsey’s.
If all goes well, I will be able to see Halsey this summer in Boston and since most of the Manic tour was cancelled, many of the songs from that album will be included on the setlist. I was only able to see Halsey once in the past, on her Hopeless Fountain Kingdom tour. It was a rare case where they had a show in my actual home city of Providence, RI. I had a great time and I can’t wait to see Halsey perform live again.
The tagline for the Manic album was “an album made by Ashley for Halsey”. Halsey’s legal name is Ashley Frangipane, and she created Halsey as her stage name as a teenager. Halsey is also very open about their strugglers with bipolar disorder, hence the album name. Manic explores all ranges of emotion and different kinds of love. My personal favorite song on the album is 929, which includes voice memos of Halsey discussing their birthday with someone, as well as the lyrics “And I remember this girl with pink hair in Detroit/ Well she told me/ She said “Ashley you gotta promise us that you won’t die/ Cause we need you” and honestly I think that she lied”. During the short portion of the Manic tour that did happen, fans changed this lyric to make it their own. Instead of saying “I think that she lied”, they said “I think she was right” as a way to encourage Halsey to go on. Some of my other favorites on the album are Ashley, 3am, and killing boys, which begins with an audio clip of a deleted scene from the movie Jennifer’s Body, also a favorite of mine. Halsey also released a poetry book in 2020 with similar themes to Manic. One of the poem titles is I Wish That I Were Manic All the Time.
