US singer/songwriter Halsey has spoken in an interview for the first time about the unimaginable experience of having to perform just hours after a miscarriage.
The 21 year-old Badlands creator has had massive success in the past year nabbing a top 10 album, collaborating and performing with Justin Bieber and becoming a sought after live performer but on her way to the top she’s faced some unbelievable obstacles.
Halsey sat down with Rolling Stone for an interview and felt compelled to tell her story after she read a piece by her interviewer Alex Morris about her experience with her own miscarriage.
“I felt like I was suffocating reading that article,” Halsey said to Morris.
“Like someone put a shopping bag over my head. I didn’t want to meet you at all. I was really terrified of you, because I knew as soon as I saw you, I was going to need to tell you that last year on tour I got pregnant.”
Halsey went on to describe a night in a Chicago hotel room before the release of her debut record.
“What happens? Do I lose my record deal? Do I lose everything? Or do I keep [the pregnancy]? What are the fans going to think? What are the moms going to think? What is the Midwest going to think? What’s fucking everyone going to think,” she told Morris recalling her thoughts upon finding out she was pregnant before she was, “on a hotel bed, bloody, naked from the waist down, hours before she’s to go onstage,”as Morris described.
“I’m like, ‘I have to cancel this show!’ And everyone’s kind of like, ‘Well, it’s Vevo LIFT, and it’s 3 million impressions, so …’ No one knew what to do,” Halsey recalled, later deciding to send her assistant to the drugstore to buy adult diapers so she could go onstage. She took two Percocet and went to the venue.
“It’s the angriest performance that I’ve ever done in my life,” Halsey said.
“That was the moment of my life where I thought to myself, ‘I don’t feel like a fucking human being anymore.’ This thing, this music, Halsey, whatever it is that I’m doing, took precedence and priority over every decision that I made regarding this entire situation from the moment I found out until the moment it went wrong. I walked offstage and went into the parking lot and just started throwing up.”
Halsey isn’t entirely sure why she miscarriaged but she puts it down to the lifestyle she was living at the time.
“I wasn’t drinking. I wasn’t doing drugs. I was fucking overworked – in the hospital every couple of weeks because I was dehydrated, needing bags of IVs brought to my greenroom. I was anemic, I was fainting. My body just broke the fuck down,” she told Morris.
Despite the experience, Halsey maintains, “I want to be a mom more than I want to be a pop star”.
Since telling the story she’s received an outpouring of support online and she’s taken to Twitter to thanks everyone. She also addressed those who took it as an opportunity to bully her writing, “I’d say I hope you understand one day but I wouldn’t wish this upon anyone.”
Yesterday, Halsey released a new song with The Chainsmokers called Closer, one of only a handful of songs she’s released in 2016. She’s still on, what seems like, a never-ending tour in support of Badlands.
Listen: The Chainsmokers – Closer (Feat. Halsey)
Those of you who have tweeted me kind things, thank you for your support.
— h (@halsey) July 28, 2016
Those of you turning this into an opportunity to bully me: I'd say I hope you understand one day but I wouldn't wish this upon anyone.
— h (@halsey) July 28, 2016
