Review of “The Great Impersonator” by Halsey

Halsey isn't much of an impersonator. The singer's fifth studio album, The great imitatordraws its influence from the artists who inspired her, from David Bowie to Britney Spears, but Halsey's voice is distinctly her own – both literally and figuratively. The album's countless references are woven throughout the 18 tracks, serving her personal story as she grapples with love, family, fame and – especially – death.

In fact, mortality is a central theme throughout The great imitator. “Well, it’s contagious and you catch it like a cold,” Halsey sings in “I Believe in Magic.” The theme is sometimes treated metaphorically (ego death, for example, in “Ego”), while the health problems Halsey faced sometimes serve as harbingers of death (as in “The End”). On “Panic Attack,” she seems to hunger for some kind of agency as she tries to locate the thread between her body and her mind: “I have memories held in my stomach and my teeth.”

As always, Halsey excels at self-deprecation, sometimes dangerously approaching self-pity without completely crossing the line. “I wonder if I ever left my body behind. Do you think they would laugh at how I died?” she asks on the album's opening track, “Only Living Girl in LA,” before ironically bursting into laughter herself, wondering if she could even sell out her own funeral.

Later, in “Letter to God” (1974), Halsey reflects on how, as a child, she envied a boy suffering from leukemia for the love and attention he received from his family, and how disgusting that feeling was tempered by her nudity Emotions – and the fact that they come from the perspective of a young girl longing for the love of her own parents. Elsewhere, the heavy-handed, Kafkaesque metaphor of “The Life of the Spider (Draft)” leads to at least one heartbreakingly frank revelation: “God, how could I even dare to exist?/I look just like that, me am.” disgusting.”

Halsey has cited Tori Amos as an inspiration for “Life of the Spider,” but Fiona Apple's brand of angsty piano confessionals are a closer touchstone for this particular song. And while “Ego” was inspired by Dolores O'Riordan of the Cranberries, whose influence can certainly be heard in the song's backing vocals, the pop-punk infused track feels more like something Avril Lavigne would sing.

This could be interpreted as a superficial understanding of one's own influences, but while Halsey's references are often obvious, the backing tracks to “Letter to God (1983)” and “Panic Attack” are clear models for Bruce Springsteen's “I'm on Fire.” ” and Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” – they rarely seem derivative. This is due in large part to Halsey's clear vision of herself as an artist and The great imitator as a concept album. What if the most prominent feature of a song credited with Björk's influence on Halsey as an artist is a string sample obviously inspired by Enya's “Orinoco Flow”? No one could ever mistake these songs for those of anyone other than Halsey.