On September 4, 2024, Halsey announced that her fifth studio album, The Great Impersonator, will be released on Oct. 25. So far, four singles have been released: “The End,” “Lucky,” “Lonely is the Muse,” and “Ego.” Halsey explains the album as being made “in the space between life and death,” inspired by her experience with motherhood as well as her lupus and T-cell disorder diagnoses in 2022.
On Aug. 27, she released an album trailer, further teasing a new era. In it, she describes the thoughts she had in the midst of her medical diagnoses. She wonders what things would have been like if she had debuted in the early 2000’s, ‘90s, ‘80s, or ‘70s, creating songs representative of each respective period, and if she would still be Halsey. At the end of the trailer, she explains, “I spent half my life being someone else. I never stopped to ask myself, ‘If it all ended right now, is this the person you’d be proud to leave behind? Is it even you?’” Hence, the title of the album means that “The Great Impersonator” is herself.
The debut single, “The End,” directly mentions Halsey’s trips to the doctor on top of a mellow, fingerstyle, acoustic guitar (“Every couple of years now, a doctor says I’m sick / Pulls out a brand new bag of tricks, and then they lay it on me”). Throughout, she asks the intended audience what they would do if they knew that it was the end for her (“If you knew it was the end of the world / Could you love me like a child? / Could you hold me in the dark?”). Because she has been living an especially dark time of her life, Halsey pours out the fears that seep into her mind as she grows ill.
“Lucky,” the album’s second single, released on July 26, 2024, contains a sample of Britney Spears’s 2000’s hit of the same name. Its accompanying music video was also released on the same day. The song is reminiscent of a diary, a confession of Halsey’s struggles behind the fancy costumes and shining lights, where she openly admits that she lied to people telling them that she was fine when, in reality, she was struggling with gossip, motherhood, and her health issues (“And I told everybody I was fine for a whole damn year / And that’s the biggest lie of my career”).
On Aug. 15, Halsey released the third single, “Lonely is the Muse,” alongside a visualizer on YouTube, which consists of concert footage. A complete sonic shift from the previous single, “Lonely is the Muse” tells of Halsey’s struggles with feeling as if she is nothing, despite her huge success in the music industry. The song features hard rock elements with Halsey screaming at the end, as if letting out her rage and inner frustration with not only herself but with other people. She vents about feeling used and discarded by everyone she knows (“And when you’re done you can discard me / Like the others always do / And I will nurse my wounds until / Another artist needs me new / And I will always reassemble to fit perfectly in view / For anybody that decides that I’m of use”), and also about her fears of being forgotten (“I’m just waiting at the bar / And you rip open all my scars / By saying something like, ‘Didn’t know you were here’”). The gradual volume amplification further emphasizes the anxiety she feels despite her success.
The most recent single, “Ego,” and its accompanying music video, were released on Sept. 6. As visually demonstrated in the video, “Ego” tells of Halsey’s inner battle with herself—she knows that she acts immature and that she is unhappy as she is—and describes the need to kill her ego, or it will kill her first. In the music video, she chases herself around a mansion with a gun, hoping to hunt down the one thing holding her back from staying grounded (“I think I should try to kill my ego / ‘Cause if I don’t, my ego might kill me”). The outfit that one of the versions of herself wore in the video is the same that she wore during her VMA performance on Sept. 11. Similar to “Lonely is the Muse,” the performance was hardcore, containing rock elements, and is also performed onstage in a garage set with her band.
Halsey’s new album, The Great Impersonator, will be released on Oct. 25.