Halsey travels through her own musical multiverse in 'The Great Impersonator'

At the end of August, Halsey announced her fifth studio album in the following way: “I really thought this would be the last album I would ever make. So, I started thinking about all the ways everything could have been different. What if this wasn't the way it all happened? The 18-year-old Ashley became Halsey in 2014, but what would have happened if she had debuted in the early 2000s? The 80s? In all these times, am I still Halsey? Am I still a mother? Am I lonely? Would I have told the truth? I have spent half my life being someone else and I never stopped wondering: 'If it all ended right now, would you be proud to leave the world this person? Does he represent me?'”

Under this premise, Halsey has created a project in which she has allowed herself to be everything, including some of the most important figures in the history of music, to cover themes such as love, life, death and the sacrifice of carrying a double life (often dissociative). That's how it is The Great Impersonator.

Throughout these months, the artist has been breaking down the different tracks included in her album through the pop and rock stars who have inspired her the most. From Kate Bush to Björkpassing through Dolly Parton Stevie Nicks, Joni Mitchell, David Bowie, Britney Spears or PJ Harvey, among many others.

A Letter to Goda tragedy in three acts

One of the aspects that has caught the most attention of the tracklist is that the same song, A letter to Godis repeated up to three times. However, a note that refers to different years told us that, despite being linked, they would not sound the same. The three themes make up a story that could be summarized in the well-known phrase “Be careful what you wish for, because it can come true.”

The 1974 version is inspired by Cherand he has made it known on his social networks. Here, the singer's voice does not seem to come directly from a microphone, but from a production room where instructions are given to a cameraman “You're going to have to come to that first part, while she sings,” is heard in the background. This type of interlude thus takes us to The Cher Showa variety show hosted by Cherilyn Sarkisian.

Throughout these verses, a very young woman Halsey asks God that she is sick, as a result of her envy that one of her classmates received all kinds of attention after being diagnosed with leukemia. —an illness that Halsey, along with lupus, is still recovering from and which she talks about in The End—. “I don't want to hurt anyone so end it soon. Please, I want them to love me, not be someone they want to get rid of,” he says, referring to the unstable home in which he grew up and in which he had to be witness how, with the birth of his little brother, he had to take a backseat (since a baby naturally needs more care).

A Letter to God (1984) It places us in a kind of concert and takes us forward in time, during a period in which Ashley became independent and moved to live with her boyfriend at the time—who was an abuser—, when she was only 17 years old.

In reference to Aaliyah, unfounded by the style of the Boss (with whom she shares New Jersey as her hometown), the Halsey of the 80s would say that drug use and other addictions, as well as the abuse she suffered, caused her to lose weight. “I don't want to blame (me-me) the girl, but I have to speculate in reference to Aaliyah, if this is just the belated answer to all those prayers, because I would never have said it if I had to wait. I was happy until that moment and now everything is disintegrating,” he regrets.

Finally, A Letter to God (1998) serves, at the same time, as much as a cry to despair as a song to hopeabout how she never wants to be sick again, much less die.

“Please, God, or whoever you are (…) Please, God, you must be kidding. Why have you made me hurt and why is it over so soon? Please, God, I'm finally hurting.” I finally found someone who doesn't want to get rid of me (…) Please, God, are you busy up there? This doesn't seem fair and I've tried to hide it but I'm terribly scared,” she repeats over and over again? time.

This latest version, in reference to Aaliyah, features the participation of Ender Aydin, his three-year-old son, the one who claims that he never wants to “abandon him, but I don't think I can choose him. So I'm putting in a box all these moments in which I feel a thread of joy. I don't think my prayers will be heard because I'm screaming at nothing”.

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