Halsey isn’t a great impersonator. The singer’s fifth studio album, The Great Impersonator, draws its influence from the artists who have inspired her, from David Bowie to Britney Spears, but Halsey’s voice—both literally and figuratively—is distinctly her own. The album’s myriad references are weaved throughout its 18 tracks in service of her personal story, as she grapples with love, family, fame, and—especially—death.
Mortality, in fact, is a central theme throughout The Great Impersonator. “Well, it’s contagious, and you’ll catch it like a cold,” Halsey sings on “I Believe in Magic.” The subject is sometimes treated metaphorically (ego death, for instance, on “Ego”), while other times the health issues Halsey has faced serve as a harbinger of death (as on “The End”). On “Panic Attack,” she seems starved for some kind of agency, as she tries to locate the thread between her body and her mind: “I’ve been holding on to memories in my stomach and my teeth.”
As always, Halsey excels at self-deprecation and, at times, skirts perilously close to self-pitying without fully crossing the line. “I wonder if I ever left behind my body/Do ya think they’d laugh at how I died?” she asks on the album’s opening track, “Only Living Girl in LA,” before ironically breaking into a laugh of her own and wondering if she could even sell out her own funeral.
Later, on “Letter to God (1974),” Halsey reflects on how, as a child, she envied a boy with leukemia because of the love and attention he received from his family, the odiousness of that sentiment absolved by the nakedness of her emotion—and the fact that it’s coming from the perspective of a young girl longing for her own parents’ love. Elsewhere, the heavy-handed, Kafkaesque metaphor of “Life of the Spider (Draft)” results in at least one heartbreakingly candid revelation: “God, how could I even think of daring to exist?/Looking just like this, I’m hideous.”
Halsey has cited Tori Amos as the inspiration for “Life of the Spider,” but Fiona Apple’s brand of angsty piano confessionals are a more accurate touchstone on this particular song. And while “Ego” was inspired by the Cranberries’s Dolores O’Riordan, whose influence can certainly be heard in the song’s background vocals, the pop-punk-infused track feels more like something Avril Lavigne would sing.
This could be interpreted as a superficial understanding of one’s own influences, but while Halsey’s references are often obvious—the backing tracks to “Letter to God (1983)” and “Panic Attack” are dead ringers for Bruce Springsteen’s “I’m on Fire” and Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams,” respectively—they rarely feel derivative. That’s due, in large part, to Halsey’s clear vision of both herself as an artist and The Great Impersonator as a concept album. So what if the most prominent feature of a song attributed to Björk’s impact on Halsey as an artist is a string sample obviously inspired by Enya’s “Orinoco Flow”? Nobody could ever mistake these songs for anyone’s other than Halsey’s.
Since 2001, we've brought you uncompromising, candid takes on the world of film, music, television, video games, theater, and more. Independently owned and operated publications like Slant have been hit hard in recent years, but we’re committed to keeping our content free and accessible—meaning no paywalls or fees.
If you like what we do, please consider subscribing to our Patreon or making a donation.
