BADLANDS by Halsey // 10 Year Anniversary Album Review

BADLANDS was born out of necessity and a means of escape for Ashley Frangipane, along with the creation of Halsey as a persona she could disappear into. It wasn't just a world she built for herself, but one that allowed those who saw a piece of themselves within the music to escape into as well. That blurred line between who they are and who they perform as has always been central to Halsey's artistry. The dismantling of the divide between the two sides of herself is something she's explored time and time again, especially on albums like Manic and The Great Impersonator, but it all traces back to BADLANDS, their 2015 debut album. This music allowed Halsey to create a life devoid of expectation, control, and the limitations of reality. It was a place where she was able to reclaim her agency, and the chaos of her inner world would finally be seen, heard and understood.

To have that kind of confidence and clarity of identity at just nineteen years old was rare. Expressing herself with such emotional, bold and confrontational intensity was a direct challenge to the traditional pop star mold at the time. There was a blend of angst and innocence that only exists at that age, paired with a desperate hope for all of this to work, because she knew this was her one shot out of the life she felt trapped in. The recurring dark, dystopian imagery and fragmented, hyper-personal storytelling is exactly what set BADLANDS apart at a time when the genre was still mostly in favor of polished perfection. This album became a defining moment in the Tumblr era of music in the mid-2010's, a platform that was shaped by the very aesthetics and themes Halsey largely brought to life. It was a niche approach to take at the time, especially for someone that was trying to break into the industry, but that is what ended up making this album have such a lasting impact. She went her own way, said what she wanted, and built something that would go on to define her entire career. A decade later, it remains one of Halsey's most important artistic statements.

"With BADLANDS, I think I succeeded in the way that I did because I didn’t know what it was like to fail yet," Halsey said in an interview with Rolling Stone alongside the album's ten year anniversary. "I didn't know what it was like to win, either, but I didn't have the same pressures. I made most of that record in someone's bedroom and sat on the edge of a twin bed recording vocals through pantyhose because I couldn't afford a pop filter, they're like $9, for the record." They continued, "BADLANDS was so pure because I only had what was available to me. All I had going for me were my ideas, so they had to be good and I had to depend on them."

Released just a year after her debut EP Room 93, BADLANDS expanded on its foundation by incorporating two of its four tracks as core moments that helped shape the full-length album's narrative. Much like Room 93, the concept surrounding BADLANDS is largely focused on her time spent living out of a hotel room while working on this music. She explored the feelings of forced intimacy while being confined to a small, temporary space, while also grappling with the emotional isolation that comes with living a transient life.

"BADLANDS spawned out of my fascination with the concept of isolation in hotel rooms and this idea of being in a place where thousands of people have temporarily lived before you," Halsey told Interview Magazine in 2015. "It's such a bizarre thing because in a hotel room, there's nothing to challenge you, there's nothing to provoke you or trigger you to see who this person in front of you really is. I got so obsessed with this parallel universe, this dystopian, post-apocalyptic civilization, and I started thinking, 'What do the people here look like? What do the colors look like? What's its history?'"

Halsey's debut single, "Ghost", was first released independently before she signed with Astralwerks to release Room 93 and BADLANDS. The track went on to become a pivotal moment in the narrative and track listing of both projects. The format of the song has always been so captivating and from the first few seconds the listener immediately gets sucked into the story behind it. It begins at the bridge, then moves into fast-paced almost sort of rap style verse. It kind of breaks all of the traditional pop songwriting "rules", an approach that ultimately ended up shaping a lot of the music Halsey would go on to make. To start off her very first single with the line, "I'm searching for something I can't reach", is just such a perfect way to begin this musical journey that she has been on ever since. "...It ended up just being like my signature," they said in their 2014 Spotify commentary of the song, "It was like how I knew what the Halsey project was gonna sound like".

Her love for the "sad eyes, bad guys, mouth full of white lies" runs through both the EP and album with the recurring motifs of a toxic romance and emotional volatility. The deeper story of this music isn't truly centered on that though. Beneath all the passion and chaos is something far more important: a bold and independent artistic statement that she doesn't belong to anyone but herself. "Hurricane" is the piece that bridges the Room 93 EP and the BADLANDS album together, and serves as the thesis of everything Halsey is and stands for in their work. The declaration of "I don't belong to no city, don't belong to no man" is so bold and a message that really stands out as the overarching theme of her entire career. To have the foresight and confidence to have written a lyric like that on her first ever release is so powerful and truly admirable. The storytelling aspect of "Hurricane" is so vivid too, the grunge and grime of New York City is ever present and so specific in the details.

"Castle" is the dark, haunting and commanding introduction into the album. "Sick of all these people talking, sick of all this noise," Halsey sings in the opening lines of the song that would go on to set the tone for everything to follow. "Tired of all these cameras flashing, sick of being poised". These lines are delivered with a defiant, unapologetic edge, signaling her intention to approach this project with a distinct perspective and a refusal to conform. From the very first track, it's clear she's carving out her own space in music, one that challenges industry norms and embraces emotional grit above all else.

This song, as well as the rest of BADLANDS, is a direct challenge to the power structures she's up against as a young woman entering the music industry. "I'm headed straight for the castle, they wanna make me their queen and there's an old man sitting on the throne there, saying that I probably shouldn't be so mean," she sings in the chorus. "I'm headed straight for the castle, they've got the Kingdom locked up and there's an old man sitting on the throne there, saying I should probably keep my pretty mouth shut".

"Hold Me Down" is one of the most vividly written and powerful moments of the album. The religious undertones are very strong as they allude to a kind of medieval power struggle that runs throughout BADLANDS, a central theme tied to her desperate need to escape systems of control. There's a recurring tension between that feeling of submission and resistance as she fights to make her voice heard. "I sold my soul to a three-piece and he told me I was holy," they sing in the pre-chorus. "He's got me down on both knees, but it's the devil that's tryna hold me down". The sense of being exalted and exploited simultaneously mirrors many of the broader themes of the record. "They rush me, telling me I'm running out of time," she sings in the second verse. "They shush me, walking me across a fragile line".

"I was meeting a bunch of mean, old men who thought they knew better than I. And I met this one guy in particular, a certain asshole who inspired this song," Halsey said at a live show in 2015. "This song is a reminder that no matter how small you are or how small people may make you seem, you should never let anything hold you down."

"New Americana" is one of the most culturally reflective moments on BADLANDS, in a way that does feel very frozen in time for the era of which it was released in 2015. It offers commentary on counterculture and the broader role of social media in shaping a generation. "Cigarettes and tiny liquor bottles, just what you'd expect inside her new Balenciaga," they sing. "Viral mess, turned dreams into an empire, self-made success, now she rolls with Rockefellers". It's a song about not feeling like an outsider, even while living in a world that wasn't necessarily built to include you. Halsey taps into the contradictions of modern youth with all of the the curated luxury, performative rebellion, viral fame, and manufactured influence that define the digital age. "Survival of the richest, the city's ours until the fall, they're Monaco and Hamptons bound, but we don't feel like outsiders at all," Halsey sings in the pre-chorus.

The themes of escape and the desperate need to be running toward something undefined but necessary is woven throughout the album. BADLANDS is, at its core, a coming-of-age story. It's about growing up in a world that feels both hyperconnected and isolating, and trying to find meaning in the noise. On "Roman Holiday", she sings, "Didn't know where I was running to, but I won’t look back," which is a lyric that perfectly captures the emotional urgency of youth and the need to move forward, even without a clear destination.

"Coming Down", "Haunting", and "Control" feel like a trilogy within BADLANDS, each one connected through Halsey's portrayal of power and vulnerability, using psychological and religious imagery in a way that's deeply captivating.

"Coming Down" is one of the most intimate and stripped-down tracks on the album. "I found God, I found him in a lover," she sings, "when his hair falls in his face and his hands so cold they shake". It evokes a distinct emotional isolation that echoes the themes of Room 93, capturing the inner chaos she was grappling with at the time. "Now we're lost somewhere in outer space in a hotel room where demons play," she continues. The song also connects thematically to "Hold Me Down", as both explore feelings of being exploited and manipulated, often by men who only see her as something to possess. "Haunting" then takes that vulnerability and turns it darker. "I was as pure as a river, but now I think I'm possessed," she sings. "You put a fever inside me and I've been cold since you left." It's a chilling descent into the emotional aftermath of this relationship.

Finally, "Control" feels like the eruption of every emotion she pent up throughout the entirety of the album up to that point. It serves as a very important turning-point in the BADLANDS narrative. It's the moment she fully reclaims her power from the villains that live in her head. "I'm bigger than my body, I'm colder than this home," she sings in the pre-chorus. "I'm meaner than my demons, I'm bigger than these bones." The production is heavy and chaotic, mirroring the confrontation with the parts of herself she's been hiding from all along.

The most pivotal moment of BADLANDS and truly of Halsey's entire career up to this point is "Colors". This song encapsulates everything that makes her such an incredible artist and songwriter, with stunning imagery, emotional vulnerability and a poetic sense of storytelling that defines her work.

In an interview with SiriusXM, Halsey said that "Colors" is "...about being in a relationship with someone and kind of watching the vibrancy slowly start to leak out of them, watch the colors start to fade, whether they're falling victim to drugs or falling victim to work or any sort of negative behavior that's kind of taking them away from the bright and lively person that they used to be. You can kind of see them start to fade to gray, and you wish you had them back the way that they used to be."

It is so specific lyrically in a way that lets the listener know exactly who she is writing about and all of the reasons they left a lasting impact on her. "Your little brother never tells you but he loves you so, you said your mother only smiled on her TV show, you're only happy when your sorry head is filled with dope, I'll hope you make it to the day you're twenty-eight years old," Halsey sings in the opening verse. She paints this portrait of a man who embodies the quintessential tortured poet type, someone that she loved deeply and wished she could have saved. In the aftermath of that relationship, Halsey writes about all of the colors, or lack thereof, that she was left with. "You're ripped at every edge but you're a masterpiece," beautifully captures that.

"You were red, and you liked me because I was blue, but you touched me, and suddenly I was a lilac sky, then you decided purple just wasn't for you," she says in the spoken-word bridge. That passage, posted by Halsey on Tumblr before the song's release, gained traction independently of her name. When "Colors" was released, she was ironically accused of plagiarizing a Tumblr quote, when in reality, she was actually "plagiarizing" herself. In a 2015 VEVO Ask:Reply interview, she called it the best lyric she'd ever written at the time, explaining, "It's about a person who gets affected by their partner in a relationship, and then their partner leaves them because of the person that they've become when, you know, the other person made them that way."

The relationship that defied this chapter of her life is described in such detail throughout the entire album. The toll it took on her and the emotional impact she was left to reckon with is a major part of the story of this album. "Young God" feels like the climax of the album, as this intense, mythical chapter of her life is described in such striking detail. Halsey describes the toll of what it took to love someone like that so deeply, all of the chaos and self-destruction laid out so openly.

"He says, 'Ooh, baby girl, you know we're gonna be legends, I'm the king and you're the queen and we will stumble through heaven," she sings in the opening lines. "If there's a light at the end, it's just the sun in your eyes, I know you wanna go to heaven, but you're human tonight". These lyrics are written as if it were a fever dream, in the haze of this reckless romance and delusion that she devoted herself to at this time. It evokes this otherworldly feeling of floating above the rest of the world, dethatched from the rest of reality.

One of the most important songs Halsey has ever made is "Gasoline". It is the true cornerstone of BADLANDS, which is ironic because it was only initially released as a bonus track for the album. It was never promoted as a single, but has gone on to become a fan-favorite and a crucial piece of the greater story surrounding who Halsey is as an artist. It captures the essence of the album's dystopian landscape, written through a raw, unfiltered and deeply personal lens.

The verses are written as a series of questions, each one more confrontational than the last. "Are you insane like me? Been in pain like me? Bought a hundred dollar bottle of champagne like me? Just to pour that motherfucker down the drain like me? Would you use your water bill to dry the stain like me?" Halsey sings in the opening verse. "Are you high enough without the Mary Jane like me? Do you tear yourself apart to entertain like me? Do the people whisper 'bout you on the train like me? Saying that you shouldn't waste your pretty face like me?"

Halsey's voice cuts through all of the outside noise and distortion she feels overcome by in the song's chorus. "And all the people say, 'You can't wake up, this is not a dream, you're part of a machine, you are not a human being, with your face all made up, living on a screen, low on self-esteem, so you run on gasoline," she sings in the powerful chorus. Much like "Castle" and "Hold Me Down", this track confronts the machinery of fame and the pressures placed on young women to conform themselves into palatable versions of who they're told to be. "Gasoline" is her pushing back against that notion stronger than ever before. "Do you call yourself a fucking hurricane like me?" she declares in the second verse, a reminder that chaos can be powerful.

To mark the ten-year anniversary of BADLANDS, Halsey released two self-directed short films for "Gasoline" and another deep-cut, "Drive", which also went on to become a fan-favorite over the years. Interwoven with symbolism and memory, they dismantle the last decade of her work and rebuild it with even more clarity and perspective. In revisiting the past, Halsey offers a message to every version of herself, and to every listener who's ever felt trapped in their own metaphorical Badlands: you can wake up. You are not a machine. You have the power to rewrite the narrative. The closing monologue of "Drive" is especially poignant, as she speaks directly to the viewer: "They raised us to believe that the Badlands are an inescapable truth when you're in captivity," Halsey says. "But I've seen behind the walls and I recorded this to let you know there is more out there. You're probably wondering who I am. But my name doesn't matter, my voice does. And now, so does yours."