Ashley Nicolette Frangipane or as most of us know her Halsey was born on the 29th September 1994 in Edison, New Jersey. Halsey is an electropop artist who got signed by Astralwerks in early 2014 and debuted with her EP “Room 93” in October the same year. On the 28th August in 2015, she released her debut album called “Badlands” with songs such as “New Americana” and “Castle”. The album was a great success and reached the second place on Billboard 200 and it was certified Platinum.
Halsey’s career continued to rise and in 2016 she was a featured vocalist on The Chainsmokers’ single “Closer” which topped the charts in over 15 countries and was later certified Diamond in the USA. The following year she released her second album “Hopeless Fountain Kingdom” which topped the Billboard 200 and two of the songs on the album, “Now or Never” & “Bad at Love” reached top 20 in the US. Her third album “Manic” is scheduled to be released on January 17th 2020 and it consists of songs such as “Graveyard”, “Without me” and “You should be sad”.
Halsey has received four Billboard Music Awards, one GLAAD Media Award, a Guinness World Record and an MTV Video Music Award. She also has a Grammy Award nomination and has sold 22 million records in the US. Halsey could be described as an activist; during the 2016 presidential election, she supported Bernie Sanders and told her fans to vote for him. She also is a feminist and during 2018 Women’s March she delivered a speech in the form of a performance of a poem titled “A Story Like Mine”, in 2017 she donated $100,000 to Planned Parenthood. She also is a member and supporter of the LGBT+ community and much more.
However, her life has not always been a bed of roses. Throughout her childhood, her family moved often as her parents worked many jobs and by the time she reached her teen years she had been enrolled in six schools. At the age of 17, she struggled with mental health problems and got hospitalized for two weeks and that’s when they discovered that she is bipolar which also is a diagnose her mother has. In 2012 she graduated from Warren Hills Regional High School in Washington and later on enrolled in the Rhode Island School of Design, however, she withdrew due to financial problems and attended community college instead. Later on, she dropped out of community college and got rejected by her family because they disagreed with a lot of things about her. She started living in a basement in lower Manhattan together with a group of friends of her then-boyfriend. When she wasn’t living in the basement she lived in one of New York’s homeless shelters and considered prostitution as a way to make some money. In an interview, she said that she once spent the $9 she had left on her bank account to buy four Red Bull energy drinks to be able to stay awake two to three nights because it was less dangerous than to sleep and risking being kidnapped or worse.
Halsey's world tour "Manic World Tour" is starting off in Europe on the 20th February in Madrid and ends on the 12th March in Manchester. Then on June 2nd the US part of the tour begins in Seattle and then ends on the 1st August in Irvine.
It's easy to say that Halsey's road to fame and success hasn't been easy but she is using her tough times growing up to create hits after hits. It's going to be interesting to see what she will do in the future.