Manic

”My personal life is a disaster,” Halsey tells Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, reflecting on the consequence of her meteoric rise from indie outsider to pop superstar. Many of the songs on the 25-year-old’s emotional third album Manic were written from the eye of the storm. “I’m impulsive, uncensored, leading with emotion rather than logic, zipping all over the place like, ‘What if this song sounded like The Beach Boys? What if six of them don't have any drums?’” The result is a poetic and courageous work that traces heartbreak, health and personal growth. “This whole album isn’t about Gerald,” she says, anticipating that the public’s attention will inevitably zero in on her breakup with rapper G-Eazy. "A lot of it is a reconnaissance of things I never got to work through because I was 19 and I was Halsey. I didn't have time for self-care because I had to be composed. And I got too composed —that was part of the problem.” Below, she shares the inside story behind some of the album’s most personal songs. Ashley “Starting the album with my real name is a comfortable entry point for people, like saying, 'Hey, I'm still here, but I'm going to take you down on a different journey right now.' A lot of this album was written as I became more aware of my mortality. Sometimes I'm on top of the world and I've never felt better in my life. Other days I'm like, 'If I keep doing this, I'm going to die.’ This song is an introduction and a warning: It’s saying, ‘Here's this album that I had to cut myself open to make, and will continue to cut myself open to tour, promote and explain, but I don't know how many more of these you're going to get.'” Forever ... (is a long time) "Every album of mine has what we call a trio: three songs smack in the middle that serve as a transition and are meant to be listened to in succession. On Manic, it’s 'Forever ... (is a long time)', 'Dominic's Interlude' and 'I HATE EVERYBODY’. On this song, I'm falling in love. The instrumental is major, all these