Review of the album “Halsey: The Great Imitator”.

This kind of distorted self-perception is interesting, but Halsey isn't necessarily adept enough in singer-songwriter mode to create a nuanced exploration of it. (Their best songs — “Without Me,” “You Should Be Sad,” “Nightmare” — are extremely efficient and subtle, big emotions leading to big payoffs.) On “Lonely Is the Muse,” they sing about being ” lonely and forgotten” as a muse for former artist friends; The verse is sharp and funny, and it's also one of the most startling passages in pop music this year:

I inspired platinum records
I have received Platinum airline status
And I mined some diamonds
From the stories in my head
But I'm reduced to just one body
Here in someone else's bed

The muse's role in art has historically been to demean and objectify, but one can hardly argue that Halsey is some kind of Dora Maar – Halsey is one of the most successful artists of her generation, and many of them In the greatest hits like In the absolutely brutal Hot 100 No. 1 hit “Without Me,” character assassinations of former romantic partners are carried out with the precision of an MI6 agent. There is absolutely no convincing argument that G-Eazy's songs about Halsey are taken more seriously than Halsey's about G-Eazy, so one has to wonder about the purpose and value of this song; Is this intended to evoke a feeling of victimhood? To make some listeners feel guilty for not appreciating her genius? There's no way to explain how someone feels, of course, but as a listener it's jarring to hear a passage like this, whose indulgently sad veneer masks a convenient rejection of the author's own agency and talent. Does Halsey see absolutely no irony in claiming that she has to bear the expectations of millions of fans before reducing her own achievement to “a few diamonds” about 40 minutes later?

It's hard to say, honestly, but a lot of it The great imitator It feels like it's designed to position Halsey as a tortured, unique artist: her status as a loner weirdo is highlighted in “Darwinism,” a Radiohead-sounding tribute to David Bowie, and the PJ Harvey-inspired track “Dog Years” itself conjured up one of the album’s better approximations. (It also contains a really badass pun: “I'm trying to be positive, but it's really hard.”) A nicely designed promotional website for the album proudly points this out The great imitator marks the first time since Frank Ocean that producers Michael Uzowuru and Alex G, vocal producer Caleb Laven and engineer Sean Matsukawa “have worked together on a project.” Endless And Blond“—a somewhat useless detail that just tells you that Halsey hopes you hear this as a great album. In reality it is a grand attempt at trompe l'oeil. The studio noises and murmurs between takes are carefully placed to make you feel like you're watching great things being conjured before your eyes. An Alex G fan would only recognize his presence here because you can literally hear him speaking in some songs; Apart from that, the anonymous polyester interpretations of soft rock and raw folk bear no resemblance to his own music. The most important musical discovery here might be that even the guys from Blond can produce When We Were Young replacements – worthy pop-punk if they really try.