Badlands (Halsey album)

Title and music

The name "Badlands" is a reference to Halsey's state of mind while writing the album, to give a physical place as a metaphor for a desolate and lonely mind. Musically, the album is mainly rooted in electropop, alternative pop, and synthpop, and features industrial undertones.

Production

According to Halsey, Badlands is a concept album that focuses on the fictional dystopian society known as The Badlands. The city is surrounded by a desert wasteland, keeping the inhabitants of The Badlands captive. The album was inspired by post-apocalyptic movies such as The Fifth Element. After writing the first few songs, Halsey came to the realization that the entire concept was a metaphor for her mental state. Halsey states that she created the Badlands as an escape from her real life struggles. In her opinion, the metaphor was that even with no escape, there is still optimism that there is somewhere else to go. The album was executive produced by Lido.

Singles

"Ghost" was released as Halsey's debut single on October 27, 2014, with an accompanying music video filmed in Tokyo, which was directed by Malia James and Ryan Witt. "Ghost" was released to radio on April 7, 2015. Halsey announced "New Americana" as the second single from the album, which was officially released on July 10, 2015. The official music video for "New Americana" came out on September 25, 2015. "New Americana" peaked at number 60 on the Billboard Hot 100. "Colors" serves as the official third single. It was released to alternative radio on February 9, 2016. The fourth single, "Castle", was released on April 8, 2016, along with a soundtrack version for the film The Huntsman: Winter's War.

Reception

Signposted by its prominent chart visibility on iTunes, Badlands amassed a healthy number of preorder sales ahead of its release. Per a Hits Daily Double report, nearly 40,000 by August. The album debuted at number two on the Billboard 200 with a total of 115,000 units (97,000 in pure album sales) which marked the highest charting album released by the Astralwerks record company so far.

Elsewhere, the album debuted at number two in Australia, number three in New Zealand and Ireland, number five in the Netherlands and reached the top 10 in both the United Kingdom and Belgium (Ultratop Flanders).

In a review for Pitchfork, Nathan Reese wrote "Reading interviews with Halsey you get the sense of a canny and talented performer, one who legitimately wants to connect with fans. But the public persona only comes through on Badlands in fits and starts, and there isn't a single subversive or original second on the album." About the chorus on "New Americana", he commented "Like most of Badlands, it's calculated, defiant, and, ultimately, hollow." In a short review, Rolling Stone's Joe Levy called Halsey a "new popstar with a knack for sticky imagery". The album was included at number six on Rock Sound's top 50 releases of 2015 list.

The album currently has more than 2,000,000 copies sold around the world according to the new rules of streaming (1,000,000 copies sold in pure sales ).

Track listing

Notes

Sample credits

Personnel

Credits adapted from the liner notes of the deluxe edition of Badlands.