When Halsey first introduced that their fourth studio album could be about being pregnant, she confronted intense fan resistance. In an Web age the place youngsters and younger adults are a cornerstone of the patron base, and intercourse attraction and edginess sells, motherhood and being pregnant is perhaps thought of alienating to younger viewers and, effectively, unsexy.
“What ended up taking place with lots of my followers’ first response was, ‘Is she going to get boring now?’ They had been like, ‘there’s going to be nothing for me right here,’” Halsey informed Billboard.
However If I Can’t Have Love, I Need Energy’s (2021) grunge-pop-meets-alternative-rock presents the album’s intentful narrative in a fashion that’s removed from boring. With an prolonged model of the file dropping in early January, Halsey deserves everybody’s consideration. Nevertheless, the album has garnered comparatively muted industrial success regardless of its addictively unapologetic singles “I’m not a lady, I’m a god” and “You requested for this,” in addition to an accompanying promotional movie launched on HBO Max.
Direct and compelling, the album’s title—maybe an allusion to Machiavelli—units the tone for an idea album that takes on womanhood unblinkingly, biking via nuances of femininity and exploring miscarriage’s biting grief. Summary feminist ideas change into concretized. The aptly named opening track, “The Custom,” explores how conventional understandings of gender expectations play a direct function in establishing institutionalized and internalized misogyny.
“And so they mentioned that boys had been boys, however they had been improper / Take what you need, take what you’ll be able to / Take what you please, don’t give a rattling / Apologize, by no means permission,” Halsey chants within the refrain, describing how societal gender expectations create misogynistic environments, excuse immoral male habits, and require ladies to be excessively understanding and forgiving.
Halsey deconstructs being pregnant with a refreshing tackle postpartum sexuality, because the album as a complete revolves across the dichotomy of the Madonna-whore advanced. In a now-deleted Instagram post, Halsey described how they needed to give attention to “the concept that me as a sexual being and my physique as a vessel and present to my baby are two ideas that may co-exist peacefully and powerfully.”
“My physique has belonged to the world in many alternative methods the previous few years, and this picture is my technique of reclaiming my autonomy and establishing my satisfaction and energy as a life drive,” they wrote.
Within the lead single “I’m not a lady, I’m a god,” Halsey chants their empowered identification: “I’m not a lady, I’m a god / I’m not a martyr, I’m an issue / I’m not a legend, I’m a fraud.” By reappropriating phrases traditionally ascribed to “problematic” and important ladies like Joan of Arc and Cleopatra, Halsey critiques how ladies are sometimes decreased into one among two classes: the pure, virginal Madonna and the sexually-corrupted whore. Halsey seeks to resolve the extreme categorization of ladies by juxtaposing adjectives which might be sometimes used to discredit ladies with those who rejoice ladies as a substitute.
Halsey departs from her trademark arena-pop sound for a heavier, electronic-rock sound that will appear ironic and unconventional for an album coping with being pregnant. The album’s sound is basically owed to the album’s producers, 9 Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. Although 9 Inch Nails is related to a metallic and industrial rock sound, the pair can also be recognized for scoring movies like The Social Community (2010), The Lady with the Dragon Tattoo (2011), and Gone Lady (2014) with an ambient sound—that’s, mild digital instrumental music with no distinctive beat. Nevertheless, they handle to create pressure with their ambient scores, a ability that lends itself effectively to If I Can’t Have Love, I Need Energy’s slower tracks.
Though Halsey was not credited in producing the album, she remained accountable for the overarching story and imaginative and prescient all through the album’s manufacturing course of. Halsey departed from regular collaborative conventions for songwriting and wrote the entire album’s lyrics earlier than asking Reznor and Ross to supply the album.
The product? An album the place every monitor’s sound has taken the lyrical themes in thoughts throughout its manufacturing, making for an particularly private and audibly genuine listening expertise. “You requested for this” options rattling drums and muted guitar riffs that aptly accompanies the monitor’s give attention to feminine self-blaming. “Go on and be a giant lady / You requested for this now / You higher present ’em why you speak so loud,” Halsey sarcastically jests as muted guitar riffs develop in depth, describing how ladies usually blame themselves when dealing with opposition in misogynistic environments. The album’s musical manufacturing provides an abrasive high quality to Halsey’s pointed lyricism, elevating her carefully-chosen phrases from merely insightful turns of phrase to an intricate feminist narrative that traverses your entire album.
The album’s by-far most fascinating track, “Bells in Santa Fe,” is full of loaded one-liners and stands aside in the way in which it creates depth with a comparatively gradual tempo. A contemplative beat is layered with digital blips that develop in quantity as Halsey croons, “Don’t name me by my title / All of that is non permanent / Watch as I slip away to your sake.” Halsey revealed that these strains are a reference to the Miyazaki movie Spirited Away. Within the movie, the principle character Chihiro has her title stolen by a witch. The lack of her personal title leads her to lose her identification and connection to the residing world. Halsey, equally, fears that their stage title, an anagram of their actual title, Ashley, and the celebrity related to it would overshadow their sense of self.
“I’ve at all times associated to Chihiro,” Halsey wrote in a Tweet. “If I ‘overlook my actual title,’ I’ll lose myself to an unfamiliar world as effectively.”
Within the track, Halsey additionally describes their stage title and fame as “non permanent,” implying that they can’t retain their fame endlessly—primarily because of unreasonable societal expectations the place artists should constantly reinvent themselves with every comeback to be flashier, shinier, and sexier. Because of this, she feels the necessity to “slip away” from the confines of public stardom not solely to protect her sense of self, however to flee “for [the public’s] sake,” earlier than she is deemed irrelevant and boring.
In fact, in true Halsey style, these lyrics might maintain twin meanings. Maybe as a result of she should repress her true self to be the general public determine her viewers desires her to be, Halsey feels herself starting to “slip away” and lose herself to an unfamiliar world. “Bells in Santa Fe” finest showcases this album’s chopping lyricism with the killer line, “I might preserve your mattress heat, in any other case, I’m ineffective / I don’t actually imply it ’trigger who the fuck would select this?” Right here, Halsey demonstrates her trademark skill to make use of colloquial phrases to determine subtlety. Whereas commenting on how ladies are often perceived as helpful solely to fulfill male pleasure, she sarcastically implies that she is joking to not offend those that consider that gender inequality is now not related. Nevertheless, she then counters the very concept of a post-feminist world by citing a professional query: Who would select to be seen in the way in which ladies usually are? Who would select degradation and objectification?
As “Bells in Santa Fe” builds with distorted guitar riffs and a haunting repetition of “All of that is non permanent,”’ it seamlessly flows into the album’s subsequent monitor, “Simpler Than Mendacity.” Extra sonically abrasive than its sister monitor, “Simpler Than Mendacity” fills the ear with exclamatory lyrics which might be heightened by a quick tempo, outstanding distorted guitar riffs, and shouted vocals. “You liar, you don’t love me too / It’s simple for you in spite of everything,” Halsey spits, calling out her lover for claiming to care about her whereas nonetheless mistreating them. This, too, is gendered commentary: “it’s simple” for her lover to mistreat her and escape criticism as a result of the expectations for male habits are set so low. This track is a surefire headbanger, full with jarringly insightful lyrics that create a way of cathartic chaos.
Though If I Can’t Have Love, I Need Energy’s commonplace model conveys a nuanced narrative, the prolonged album’s three bonus songs efficiently wrap up its themes. The second of those further tracks, Reznor and Ross’ rework of “Nightmare,” is a extra menacing tackle the unique track that was launched in 2019. The monitor does an important job of bringing collectively Halsey’s previous arena-pop lyricism together with her current grunge-pop sound. “I preserve a file of the wreckage in my life / I gotta acknowledge the weapon in my thoughts / They speak shit, however I like it each time,” Halsey sings, describing how they use songwriting as a approach to rise above the hate they’ve obtained within the public eye by writing cathartic songs. The prolonged model’s last monitor, “Folks Disappear Right here,” cycles again to themes explored at first of the album. “Method down the darkish alleyway / Someplace within the Backyard State / The lady from California waits / She has my title however not my face,” Halsey laments, warning her viewers about how fame led to dropping her sense of self.
Opposite to her (problematic) followers’ concern {that a} idea album about being pregnant could be inaccessible and boring, Halsey’s nuanced songwriting doesn’t alienate the a part of her viewers that has not skilled being pregnant. As a substitute of specializing in the singular expertise in and of itself, she lets us view being pregnant as one thing skilled extra extensively via lenses of sexuality, gender relations, and the sentiments of concern, insecurity, and ache. “I wasn’t attempting to make a file that was drowning in its personal profundity. I used to be sort of simply writing about how I really feel,” Halsey mentioned in an Apple Music interview. Her skillful use of phrases which have double-meanings permits followers to interpret their lyrics in an infinite variety of methods, rendering the album extensively relatable, particularly for girls at present.
Nevertheless, Halsey has made it clear that If I Can’t Have Love, I Need Energy just isn’t a “lady energy” album. Within the Apple Music interview, they discuss how the album may traverse themes of being pregnant and new motherhood, however that their very own journey doesn’t align with the hyper-feminine societal conception of it. “No one talks concerning the ache, the blood, the illness, the concern, the truth that it’s arguably probably the most harmful situation a human physique can expertise,” she mentioned. “It’s framed as this time the place you have to be so grateful—me particularly, due to my struggles with reproductive well being. However the purpose that the album has this horror theme is as a result of this expertise has its horrors. I imply, I’ve nightmares about waking up in my very own pool of blood.” Halsey’s concern of miscarriage is particularly prevalent in “1121,” a track they wrote the day they came upon they had been pregnant. “Please don’t go away (I’m runnin’ out of time to inform you) / Don’t go away me within the form you left me (I’m runnin’ out of issues that I remorse),” she sings, begging her child to stay wholesome all through her being pregnant.
However maybe creating the album itself was a robust transfer. “I feel it most likely could be skilled in that means, for some individuals, as a result of the truth that I made it in any respect and the way in which that I made it’s sort of like a woman energy assertion,” she conceded. Now greater than ever, we’d like artists like Halsey to deconstruct hyper-glorified experiences like being pregnant and fame and talk about the nuanced nature of such experiences when it comes to each pleasure and horror—each love and energy.
