Halsey recalled the experience of creating “If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power” and the film that accompanied it at the same time, saying that “they played my album almost methodically”.
The singer and songwriter also released her fourth studio effort this summer If I can not have love, I want strength, a one-hour visual piece on “the lifelong social maze of sexuality and birth.”
- READ MORE: The NME Big Read – Halsey: “I was always driven to reinvent myself and reinvent my genre”
Speaking last week NME In an interview with Big Read, Halsey explained: “I’ve wanted to make a movie for an album ever since. [debut album] “Badlands”, but, to be honest, I did not have the financial resources to do so.
“It was like, ‘Okay, people want to give you money to make art – what are you going to do?'”
Halsey continued to remember how the film affected their latest album. “I was almost methodical on my album, which I think it is super “Douche-y, but that’s what happened,” they said NME.
“It was very nice to make a record in combination with this, because you don’t go back and you don’t design connections that don’t exist and you try to fill holes to make things work. “Everything is so coherent and coherent all the time.”
The singer said that the creation of the film made “If I Can’t Have Love…” feel like a concept album. “The most important thing for me is that this album has intensity – it has to be compassionate, otherwise I am wronging the message,” he said. NME.
Speaking of recruiting Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross of the Nine Inch Nails – which produced the LP – he recalled: “First of all, I thought I was writing a letter to Santa Claus saying, ‘I was a very good girl.’
“I was very honest and said that I was a big fan of plagiarizing you for years – wrong – and I’m not arrogant enough to believe I have something new to offer you, but this album is about pregnancy, gender identity, physical horror “.
NME hailed Halsey for creating “an endlessly fascinating artistic statement” with “If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power”. See the four star review here.
Elsewhere in the Big Read interview, Halsey talked about the honor of receiving the Innovation Award at the BandLab NME Awards 2022, which they will receive during a ceremony at the O2 Academy Brixton in London on March 2.
said Halsey NME that she “did not wait” for the award and was “very surprised” to be recognized by the nod. “But it’s really, really awesome,” he added.
