Halsey brings her Hopeless Fountain Kingdom tour to the Allstate Arena in Chicago (Photos by Dan Garcia)
“Without Me” was launched on all streaming platforms from singer/songwriter Halsey on Thursday afternoon, which has been described as a ‘cathartic bop’ on her twitter prior to the release.
When R&B meets pop music, you get the new Halsey single. The lyrics dive into a lover feeling like they’re better or bigger than her. It paints a story of her love experience, detailing loving someone so much and putting them back on their feet only for them to take advantage of her unconditional love. She says, “I’m the one who put you up there, I don’t know why?” referring to building her lover up.
Halsey explained the song is about her on and off again boyfriend, rapper G-Eazy. When G-eazy reportedly cheated on Halsey they split up and recently got back together.
“It’s about my life and my relationship that the world has watched so closely and so vehemently,” Halsey said in an interview with Zane Lowe from Beats 1 Radio.
Halsey went into detail when discussing the album, telling Beats 1 Radio that G-Eazy and herself are just regular people. “We all go to our best friends and tell them we’re never going to talk to that guy you got into a fight with ever again and then the next day you’re with him. If you get to do that then so do I,” Halsey told Beats 1 Radio.
The song is so personal and energetic that you can feel every ounce of feeling Halsey is portraying throughout the song. There’s empowerment and intense emotion, only to be followed by a catchy beat that makes you want to ride in your car with all the windows down on a sunny afternoon. Even Halsey admits that this song is so personal and intimate.
“It’s not protected by some character or some sub-plot” Halsey said.
Previously Halsey posted a snippet of the song along with a video that had an aura of intense emotion and a very vulnerable feeling. The video is her clothed under a shower, hair soaked, portraying the intimacy of this song.
With only an hour prior to the release Halsey began to answer questions from her fans on Twitter regarding the sound of the album and all of the details. Fans were very excited for the release because it is the first single since her last album. One person asked her how she was able to record a song while she was touring for the entirety of the summer. Her response was that some songs of hers just need to be brought to life and that’s exactly what she did with “Without Me.”
She teased fans the night before at midnight with a tweet reminding them of the release time, because typically artists’ will release songs midnight that day,.“Just a reminder #WithoutMe comes out OCT 4 @12 PM EST. PM. not AM, cuties. Now go get some f***in’ sleep ;)”
The song is described by Halsey as dynamic; some may cry and some may feel empowered. She recalled the reactions of people she’d showed prior to the release being intensely diverse. Some were very emotional and some felt empowered in a “Throw your fist in the air and slap your hands on the steering wheel” kind of way, Halsey said.
Madison Appleby is a campus correspondent for The Daily Campus. She can be reached via email at madison.appleby@uconn.edu . She tweets at @madd_journalist
