From a New Jersey native to music superstar! Halsey has come so far since their days on YouTube. The singer started releasing music online before dropping their debut album, Badlands in 2015.
“I’ve always been driven to reinvent myself and reinvent my genre,” they told NME in November 2021, referring to their If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power record. “I had a record on the Post Malone album [‘Hollywood’s Bleeding’], I had the Bring Me The Horizon collaboration [‘¿’] that was this nu-metal record, and then I was performing ‘You Should Be Sad’ at the Country Music Awards in the U.S. It was funny because it was around the album Manic, and I had this manic moment where I was like, ‘I can do anything!’ It was super liberating.”
Do anything and everything they did! Other than music, Halsey has successfully released her About Face beauty line in January 2021.
“I was an art student, so I paint and I still paint,” they told Byrdie ahead of the brand’s first drop. “Makeup has always been something I’ve just been naturally drawn to because I’m very dextrous with a brush and I know a lot about color.”
Halsey went on to say that when it came to making their makeup line, she is, “just as crazy about this as I am about music.” They added, “I’m known for sending a song back to get mixed or mastered 20 times in a row, and it’s the same way with the products. I’ll send them back and be like, ‘This formulation is too oil heavy. Let’s add hyaluronic acid to this one. This one’s not opaque enough. The shimmer disperses too much in this one.’”
With both their music and makeup, everything embodies who Halsey is as a person.
“After Manic, I had a handful of radio hits and I think people probably would have expected me to — and I would have expected myself actually — to go in that direction and continue wanting to make music that is performing commercially in that same way,” she explained to NME. “If I want to sustain myself and give myself longevity, I need to continue to make things that I love and make things that challenge me as a creative. That’s how this album came into fruition.”
Click through our gallery to Halsey’s complete transformation over the years.
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