| January 22, 2020 | Krissia Palomo | campus editor |
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With the release of her third studio album, “Manic” shows us all the different faces of Ashley Frangipane, commonly known by her moniker, Halsey.
On the listening platform Spotify, Halsey presents the album to listeners by giving them insight on what inspired the creation of the project.
“There’s an ancient saying that you have three faces,” Halsey said. “I am Halsey, Ashley, and I am offering you a glimpse of that third face.”
Sonically, this is Halsey’s most experimental release. It comes at a time where most of her peers would not have taken such a risk. While she might be losing some original fans with a poppier style, “Without Me,” ended up peaking at #1 in early January 2019.
But, this album might be a disappointment to long-time Halsey fans. In “hopeless fountain kingdom,” Halsey used interludes to separate the storyline into chapters. With“Manic,” the listener still gets lengthy interludes, but the phases aren’t distinguished. It makes the album blend together, almost sounding unorganized.
Over the summer, Halsey teased fans by releasing “Nightmare,” stating that it would be included in this project. However, as the single failed to impact the charts, she silently excluded it from the official tracklist, which left the listeners questioning the direction of the new album.
The best tracks of the album are the singles that Halsey had already previously released, one of which is the country-influenced “You should be sad.”
It’s hard to imagine the release of “Manic” could bring Halsey a lot more radio time. The sound of the album borders between radio-pop and dark-pop, which isn’t exactly in demand in the past decade.
The only features on the album are in the interludes. Since Halsey’s voice is extremely distinctive, it is hard for her to blend with other artists in a track. In this album’s case, none of the collaborations worked, which is disappointing.
All in all, some of the messages Halsey sends in this piece of work are really powerful. However, she should’ve kept her previous sound and pleased the fans who have supported her from the beginning instead of getting wrapped up in charting data. It would’ve made for a much better experience with “Manic.”
