Review Summary: Fallenmania, Part 27
Nowadays, Halsey is touring with Evanescence, making songs inspired by Evanescence or featuring Amy Lee. In other words, she’s claiming her Fallenmania loud and proud. The time has come to review her debut album, which is a great example of Fallen as an edgy pop album. For a full immersion, I’m reviewing the deluxe edition.
What are the typical ingredients of a fallenmaniac pop album? You need a dark but accessible sound, a singer with a striking aesthetic and voice, “meaningful” lyrics about personal problems, love and death, and lots of gothic imagery. All of that is found on “Badlands”. For example, listen to the gloomy synths and choirs of “Castle”, while Halsey sings about becoming the queen of the music industry and the “old man saying I shouldn’t be so mean”, in her subdued but defiant high-pitched voice.
There are more interesting instrumentations and vocals on other tracks, like the acoustic guitar, loud beat and soft, whispery singing of “Drive”. “Hurricane” has a nice wind howl sound and sort of haunting vocals, both the vocalizing and the deeper voice she uses on the chorus, as if she was singing in her lower register and very close to the mic, which is, again, very Amy Lee of her, just like the piano ballad “Trouble”.
Obviously, the minimalist synth pop beats of the album sound more like Lorde than Evanescence. “Hold Me Down” actually has a pretty catchy pop beat and an instantly memorable chorus. But the song’s lyrics, which could be about a bad relationship or her bipolar disorder, feel a lot like something Kerli could have written. “Control” has a similar topic and a much darker tone, with creepy violins and a lot of gloom in her voice.
“Roman Holiday” is another incredibly catchy pop song with a weird beat but much more hopeful lyrics tone about a young couple running away from their unhappy homes. It’s one of the highlights of the album. “Empty Gold” is upbeat and dark at the same time, with a peculiar and memorable melody on the chorus. “Ghost” has a similar kind of instrumentation, but a much faster rhythm, until the chorus where it gets gloomier and compares an emotionally distant lover to a ghost. That’s the kind of gothic imagery I was talking about.
“Colors” has another catchy melody and similar topic to “Ghost”, this time describing her lover as blue and grey. “Colors Part II” uses a few lyrics from “Colors”, over a strange, gloomy beat. However, my favorite song with a gloomy beat would be “Gasoline”. The simple, cold mix of synths and string instruments of the intro immediately feels like something you need to listen to. Lyrically, it hits more than Halsey’s other songs about her mental health, because the verses are a series of questions about whether or not the listener feels “like me”, until it soars to the distorted chorus, where she concludes “I think there’s a flaw in my code, these voices won’t leave me alone”. Even her singing sounds better than on other songs.
Unfortunately, her Fallenmania meets Lorde experimentations aren’t always successful. “Haunting” is just really repetitive, not very interesting except for the parts where she sings like Amy. I’m not sure what to think of “Strange Love”. It’s catchy, and it’s about, well, a strange relationship, one of Halsey’s favorite topics, so there’s more repetition, and some swearing just to sound edgy.
But nothing can prepare you for “New Americana”, the big hit, the song that introduced me to Halsey, her one song that people either love or hate. I’m in the latter camp. The beat is basically non-existent, her whispery-raspy voice is really not at its best and the lyrics are so awkward I could quote the entire song and horrify you. I’ll just leave you with the last line on the bridge: “What kind of bubble-gum have you been blowing lately?”.
I guess this is my only review where I save the worst song for last. Well, the deluxe edition is really long, it ends with a bunch of songs that aren’t really memorable. They’re yet more of the Halsey formula, with minimalist, sort of dark beats, whispered and belted singing, lyrics that sometimes feel personal and sometimes are just trying to be edgy, but they don’t sound as memorable as previously mentioned songs. The only one worth your time is the Halsey-esque cover of Johnny Cash’s “I Walk the Line”.
I still don’t know what to think of this album. I do enjoy some of its songs, I think she can be a pretty good songwriter when she actually tries, but not all her songs are that good or memorable. That’s my impression of Halsey’s career as a whole. Can we call Halsey a true, worthy successor to Evanescence? I’m not sure, probably because Evanescence are more consistent in quality and generally don’t make songs about how edgy they are, unlike many of their pop imitators. I think it’s interesting how her music has always had a tiny connection to Fallenmania, even though in 2015, few people were commenting on that. Her music was pop Fallenmania in its purest form, except she was a more subtle caricature of Amy Lee than Kerli or Jenna Lee, sticking to the trends of the 2010s instead. This allowed her to keep her career going strong until today, where she’s more obvious about her Fallenmania, because 2000s nostalgia is very in right now. It’s strange, but she may be the most successful Fallenmaniac currently working. Is Halsey going to save Evanescence’s career, is she going to bring a new wave of Fallenmaniacs? We’ll see. Mostly, I’m glad I have finally expressed all my complicated feelings on this album.
