Halseyhas been so many different people over the past decade.
The teenage pop rebel who spoke for a generation of New Americana.
The Shakespearean conceptual artist who turned Romeo and Juliet intoHopeless Fountain Kingdom.
The world-beating auteur ofManic.
The industrial hate machine blasting Nine Inch Nails-produced aggression onIf I Cant Have Love I Want Power.
ButThe Great Impersonatoris her rawest, darkest incarnation yet.
Halsey stands alone as she turns 30, confessing that she has no idea who she is anymore.
The Great Impersonatoris the bleakest music Halsey has ever made, and thats saying something.
The songs are loaded with rage and depression, as she unpacks her autobiography.
Shes experienced motherhood, which seems to have been totally traumatizing.
She fantasizes about death in virtually every track.
Halsey has split 2024 between making her comeback and publicly wishing shed never come back at all.
As she declares, My special talent isnt writing/Its not singing/Its feeling everything that everyone alive feels every day.
But thats what gives the album a spirit of commiseration, with all its mixed-up identity confusion.
The Great Impersonatorhas her most stripped-down music, often just guitar and piano.
So she tries on these pop eras to see how they feel.
Halsey bares her soul over acoustic guitar, laughing out loud at her own misery.
At the end, the song flips out into bursts of distorted glitch-core noise.
Theres a constant tension between the playful wit in the music and the sluggish gloom of the vocals.
But the best moments onThe Great Impersonatorcome when the music wins out.
Playing around with the past seems to shake up her imagination and point her toward the future.
