Sunday Conversation: Halsey On Their New Radio Show, Alanis, NIN, Speaking Out Politically And More

Halsey is launching their own radio show, For The Record With Halsey, as part of Amazon’s new Amp radio app. The show, which premieres tomorrow (October 17) will showcase all facets of Halsey, from their interest in politics and cooking to parents and of course music.

But as I found when speaking with Halsey this week, they are more excited to show off their interests outside of music. As Halsey explained, they are always asked about their multi-platinum music, but For The Record is a chance to for them to both learn from a wide array of guests and educate their audience on music, from Hole and Nine Inch Nails to Dido.

I spoke with Halsey, who will be playing as part of the We Can Survive benefit at the Hollywood Bowl October 22 with Alanis Morissette, Garbage, Weezer, One Republic and more, about the Amp show, the music that changed their life, their candor about their own suicidal thoughts at age 17 and how that has prompted them to give back, musical heroes like Courtney Love and much more.

Steve Baltin: What prompted the radio show?

Halsey: I’m kind of having that feeling all the time, to be honest with you. I’m just perpetually occupied, I guess. I’m like a career student. I’m just always trying to try something new, learn from someone, try different ways of flexing my creative muscles a little bit.

Baltin: As I understand it, this is going to be an interview show as well and you’re going to have friends on, correct?

Halsey: Yeah, I think so. People I want to talk to that I think have important things to say, or that I want to learn something from or that I think my fans would be excited to hear from. I’m so fortunate at this stage of my career to have access to so many incredible people and to have met so many interesting. Why not utilize this platform as a means to bring those unexpected conversations to life?

Steve Baltin: Who would be the people that you would most want to have to learn from? Who are the two or three people that you feel would be interesting to learn from in all fields?

Halsey: I definitely don’t want to restrict it to music. I have a lot of interests outside of music, and that’s going to be one of the most exciting parts of the show. I’m perpetually invited to come and talk about the songs, the projects, and the records. And I rarely get opportunities to authentically dive into some of my other interests and my other hobbies. Some of my favorite conversations throughout my career have been with psychotherapists or with filmmakers. I think it’d be really interesting to bring people on, I guess, who intersect the gap between content and culture. I make things that have an appeal to the populous and things that in a sense are commercially viable, but I always want to do it with some sort of meaningful intention. I never make anything for any reason other than that I want to make it. I think crossing that gap of what can I learn from people who are invested in culture beyond the way that it inspires me, and in the way that it functions, and in the way that it operates. There’s just a vague sense I have an opportunity to shine a light on certain things. But I think it’d be better to bring experts on who can really dive in and give more intellectualized perspectives that has a certain amount of agency beyond I’m just a pops tar talking about things that I like or that I read or that I’m interested in.

Steve Baltin: I’ll be curious to get your thoughts on the people who you feel do that intersection of culture and commerce well. You’re doing We Can Survive with Alanis. She’s as good about that as anyone there is.

Halsey: She’s a massive inspiration for me. I have a collaboration with her on my third album, Manic. We made a really spectacular song together, and she also recorded her parts of the record while she was pregnant, which obviously, that’s going to put a seed in me. Then for my next record, I made an album through my pregnancy, continually inspired by the way that she navigates her art, and her career, and the way that it kind of projects her inner happenings, I guess. My career has historically been very politically motivated. For most of my fans or people who aren’t casual listeners, when they think of me, I think they largely think about politics and activism as a really important part of what I do. The focus of my last tour was education on Roe v. Wade. I did a live painting every night that went to auction at Sotheby’s to raise funds for abortion networks. One of my first real, I guess, cultural moments outside of the records I made was the speech that I gave at the Women’s March a couple years ago. That kind of evolved into a real history for me of connecting poetry, and music or art, whatever it may be, as a means of storytelling to shine a light on my not just political affiliation, but political experience.

Baltin: Where does your political experience come from?

Halsey: I’ve walked both sides of the world in a weird way. I grew up very poor. I come from a mixed-race household, and now I live in Los Angeles. I live in one of the wealthiest places in the world, and I am so unbelievably privileged every day to have access to things like healthcare and to have a roof over my head. I have a 15-month-old son, and I think how different his life is from mine.And so I think I’m constantly living between the two, that historical frame of mind and my present frame of mind, and what the truth at the center of those two things are. So I think what is going to be most important is people hearing from people who aren’t like me, and maybe hearing from people, and finding out that they’re more like them than they would have anticipated before hearing us have a real conversation. And all the while, playing music, doing our thing and playing records that, in some way, connect back to the ethos of the conversation. It goes beyond politics. Also, I love to cook. I want to bring people on who could teach me a thing or two in the kitchen. I travel all the time. I’m a big foodie. I’m really fortunate to have eaten at some of the best restaurants in the world. And I’d love to hear from some people who are more invested in that world than I am, and give me a greater perspective on what it means when I sit down at a table now at another place. There are a lot of peers of mine who have children. I’d love to talk about their experiences being working moms. I’m a huge advocate for reproductive health and reproductive rights. My gynecologist is one of my best friends in the world. I’m sure she’ll come on the show and offer a lot of valuable insight on reproductive health and our journey together that brought me my pregnancy. But ultimately, it turned into one of my favorite pieces of art that I’ve ever made. All those things are intrinsically connected. The other thing is I have a made a company, there’s a perspective on ethical entrepreneurship and sustainability. All of our products are vegan. Our audience is in the top three percentages of gender nonconforming consumers. The products are intended to transcend the social ideals of what a beauty product is like. I think there’s a lot of ground to cover on the history of that and those who’ve come before me in pioneering that world, be it drag queens or former Hollywood makeup artists or even the chemists in the lab who are making the products and explaining why they’re safe or great or better or beneficial. To give people an idea how they can look for a product that includes those types of ingredients. The lists are kind of endless, so forgive me for not being specific about who might come. As I said, I’m so fortunate to be surrounded by so many incredibly informed people in all these different worlds that I live in. And I think the nature of the show is that it’s going to be very spontaneous. A lot of people are probably going to get a random calls from me. I’m going to say, “Hey, do you want to jump on the show?” I think that’s what’s going to be so great about it. The whole point of me doing it is to escape the confines of very restrictive media and restrictive interviewing where I’m forced within a profile of what the interview’s supposed to be. This is my chance to change my mind live on radio.

Baltin: What are a couple of the greatest protest anthems of all time?

Halsey: I can think of a few that come to mind, like “F the Police,” NWA. “Masters of War,” by Bob Dylan. “Strange Fruit, Billie Holliday. Even Hole, I think that Courtney [Love] has a lot of really great music that’s kind of pro-abortion and pro-reproductive health and finally, very, a lot of female angst that maybe aren’t lyrically or intentionally political. But the energy inspires the political ideology or inspires the rage in young women. CCR as well. I think Credence Clearwater Revival. Honestly, there’s so many. And then kind of ’90s Lilith Fair. I guess that’s kind of what inspired me to become political at a really young age and the music I was writing.

Baltin: Courtney’s been a friend forever. So hopefully you have her on the show at some point. And I would love for people who listen to your music to be exposed to Bikini Kill and L7.

Halsey: That’s one of the greatest luxuries that I have. I made my last record with Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. And for some of my fans, it was the first time they had ever heard of Nine Inch Nails. And being an entry point to educate them on the history of where the type of music they listen to now, where it comes from and kind of the predecessors who have laid the groundwork for that, that’s exciting. The feeling of putting your friend onto a cool song or sending them a playlist or someone looks at you and they go, “What is this song?” I get to do that with millions of people sometimes. It’s a lot of pressure, but it’s also really cool.

Baltin: Do you remember being a kid that first record that you got turned onto from an older sibling or a friend or whatever?

Halsey: Yeah, it was Jagged Little Pill. My mom had me when she was 20 in 1994, so she was kind of coming of age in the grunge, Sub Pop, rock era. She put me on to the Cure, Nirvana, Hole, Garbage, Cranberries, Alanis Morissette, Jewel, Dido. A lot of people talk a lot about how I have a very unique singing voice and I think part of the reason for that is I grew up emulating female vocalists who had really unique voices. And then made me embrace mine instead of train myself out of it into a more classical way of singing. And I think it’s been one of my greatest strengths as a storyteller and I learned from them. Tori Amos as well. She’s a huge formative discovery for me as a kid. My mom still has the best taste in music, so I always know when she likes one of my records, it’s a good one.

Baltin: Do you have a special radio memory or something early on where you realized the power of radio?

Halsey: I’m fortunate enough now to be friends with Elvis Duran. I’m a Jersey kid, I grew up listening to his voice every single day on my way to school, on my way home from school. I see him all the time when I do press or radio events and when I go in to promote the records. And it’s really interesting to have him as a friend now, because the voice really kind of soundtracked some of my earliest memories with my parents driving in the car. And beyond that, I remember discovering all kinds of radio when I was 15 or 16 when I first got my permit, I started driving a car and had control of it. The radio station in Pennsylvania called 104.5 and they played alt music. And there’s so much discovery for me through that in a world before algorithm, streaming music where you’re being informed what you might like. You have to go out and discover it yourself and radio is the only way to do that. And if you live in a place that where you were lucky enough to have a college radio or the liberal arts radio or an independent radio station, they were playing music that was outside of the world of popular music and there’s no better feeling than discovering a song and feeling like you’re the only person in the world who knows it. You can’t wait to tell all of your friends. And that became a really vital part of my career when I first started out because it was those independent radio stations that supported my records in the beginning, before I broke through with “Closer” with the Chain Smokers. It’s a wild journey. But I wouldn’t have the luxury to make some of the more left of center, alternative leaning records that I do if I also didn’t have such a sustained foundation and relationship with radio.

Baltin: What is the first song that you play? What is the song that sets the mood and introduces For The Record With Halsey?

Halsey: I think the go-to is probably “Nightmare.” That’s one of the songs that best encapsulates like the Halsey brand. It’s a pop record, it’s fun, it’s sexy. But it’s also pretty political and it’s explicit and it was a risk for me at the time. So coming off a lot of pop radio hits, so to take a chance on making a record that was a little bit more alternative was a really formative moment for me and the type of artist that I wanted to be or wanted to see myself become. I open my show with it usually. If it’s good enough for me to get on stage and say to tens of thousands of people, “Are you ready to meet me for the very first time?” I think it’s good enough to sell the show.

Baltin: What can people expect to learn about you from the show?

Halsey: I think the show is going to be a lot less hard than people think it is. I think maybe people have that perspective of me as someone who’s kind of loud and yelling and opinionated. That’s what’s going to be so great about this show is that in my day-to-day life I’m actually a little bit more calm and reposed and chill. And so this show is going to be pretty cool.

Baltin: I mentioned We Can Survive earlier. Why did you want to be involved with that show?

Halsey: Obviously it’s super close to home for me. I’m pretty open about I had some experience with the suicide attempt and suicidal ideas when I was 17. It was made at the most formative year of my life. I have the number tattooed on my hands. So it’s kind of an homage to still being around and still being able to have the privilege of living and writing music and releasing it. I’m getting to play the Bowl for the second time this year, which is always something I can never say no to. And I’m performing with icons of mine, like Alanis and Garbage. I grew up absolutely loving them. And I think it’s also really exciting for me because getting to be in the conversation with other kind of mainstream breakthrough alternative musicians, that’s a conversation that I want to be a part of. So any opportunity that I have to do all those things at once, play with my heroes, play the Bowl and just give back is a no brainer for me.