BADLANDS
With her 2015 debut, *BADLANDS*, Halsey joins Lana Del Rey and Sky Ferreira in penning a diary of the struggles and triumphs of being young and wild and female and free. Her neon-hued coo soars over Lido\'s clever electronic atmospheres; like an anime heroine, she climbs around a shifting 3-D terrain that mimics the drama of her futuristic emo-pop. \"Drive\" is teenage malaise played out on a highway of sunset-colored guitars and gravel-coated beats; \"New Americana\" is a bad-girl anthem that name-checks Nirvana and riffs on The Notorious B.I.G.\'s \"Juicy\" as it searches for meaning in the new millennium.
Halsey is the stage name of Ashley Nicolette Frangipane, a 20-year-old New Jersey native who has cultivated a dedicated following with just one EP to her name. Her debut LP Badlands arrives with undeniable momentum, but it is weighed down by trite lyrics and stale production, so that the details of her story wind up far more interesting than the music itself.
An internet phenomenon, New Jersey's Ashley Frangipane, aka Halsey, parlayed their over 16,000 YouTube subscribers into a record deal with Astralwerks at age 18, a deal based primarily around their moody, synth-heavy single "Ghost."