Putting the past behind her. Halsey discussed her suicide attempt, mental health and dating history, and how she bounced back from it all, in a candid new interview with Billboard.
The "New Americana” singer — who was born and raised in New Jersey — discussed how she hated her public high school and felt misunderstood with her tattoos and half-shaved hairstyle. She was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and ended up in a psychiatric hospital during her senior year after a suicide attempt. “I had tried to kill myself,” Halsey, 21, said. “I was an adolescent; I didn’t know what I was doing. Because I was 17, I was still in a children’s ward. Which was terrifying. I was in there with 9-year-olds who had tried to kill themselves.”
“There was no TV, no music, no nothing,” she told the magazine. “The day I got out of the hospital I was in the car and I was listening to Imagine Dragons. It was a f–king moment for me. I don’t think I realized how important music was to me before that.” She added, “Three years later, I was opening their U.S. arena tour.”
After high school, the openly bisexual singer moved to New York for a year. “I was following a boy,” she said. “I was 17. He was 23, and he had a really serious heroin addiction.”
Now, Halsey says her love for performance and music keeps her alive. “I could be having the worst day of my life, hate my body, think I’m fat, think I suck, and as soon as I hear the first few notes of my intro, that all goes away,” the “Colors” singer told Billboard. “Everything that I hate about myself goes away when I walk onstage. That’s why I cling to it so much — it keeps me from killing myself.”
On a lighter note, the social-media star reminisced about her awkward live TV performance with Justin Bieber on Today in November. “It was a f–king train wreck,” she said. “You don’t know fear until it’s 7 a.m. and freezing cold on live television and you’re not sure if Justin Bieber is going to kiss you or not.”
