Halsey: «Così è nato “If i can’t have love, I want power”»

“Being pregnant, writing an album: people would have expected music full of femininity, but there is no girl power on this record.” Halsey, who in July became a mother for the first time (of a child, Ender Ridley Aydin), described the genesis of If I can’t have love, I want power like a catharsis. “I had the feeling that I had to take a weight off my chest, that I had to throw out everything that I would never be able to throw out once I became a mother,” she said in an interview with Zane Lowe on Apple Music.

“All those expressions of guilt or insecurity, the belief that you could not be loved or the telling of sexually promiscuous stories and self-sabotage: it was like I had to spill my sack, and that’s okay. Today, I am responsible for another human being, ”continued the 26-year-old whose new album was released on Friday 27th August.

“I love my partner (it Turkish screenwriter Alev Aydin, ed)», Halsey later said, “But I remember early in the pregnancy I wondered how I should have behaved. Was I supposed to start being boring? Many typical features of motherhood are not compatible with the elements with which I identify myself, ”explained the artist, who recently revealed his own non-binary identity. “Still, writing this album was the easiest thing in the world. I thought it was going to be a political record, full of anger, punk. Instead, I found myself on my hands with electronic rainbows and butterflies, synthetic sounds. I was pregnant, eating vegetables and allowing myself to sleep. I was taking care of myself and the result of the process was this ».

A deep, intimate and spontaneous record: a microworld in which Halsey took refuge (also) to find shelter from the judgment of the people. “I wanted this pregnancy so much. I am twenty-six, a well underway career. I am financially independent. It was the right time. Still, people looked at me like I was a teen mom. “Oh my god, you are so young, you still have so much to do and you are not even married,” they told me. At one point, I sent everyone to hell, because the other side of the coin is the woman who is then criticized too much because she is dedicated to her career. “She will die alone”, they say ».

Halsey, in the midst of pregnancy and the creative process, chose herself, away from the stereotypes and judgmental eye of social media. “I’ll go back to using them, but I had to protect not just myself, but the creature I was carrying,” she said.