Halsey - Badlands (Record Review)

I haven’t been too big of a fan of anything Halsey has done so far, so I was rather interested to check out Badlands considering the praise she gets online these days. To my own surprise, Castle is quite intruding to me and certainly already starts to drown everything I first thought of her.
While I really do enjoy her voice, I’m not too sure as to how much I dig the music behind it all. Her lyrics seem very thought through and creative with a wide vocabulary, yet the first three tracks sound very similar to each other, e.g.

She knows exactly what she wants to bring across and say with her songs, but I’m still not over the fact as to how ... not different it all sounds. Surely, she has her own sound and you can easily tell her apart from other artists, but the record in itself is not setting itself above anything. Colors is a piece that finally gets a bit over the rest of it and manages to at least keep me interested enough to not stop at this point but actually finish the record properly. Luckily enough, Coming Down keeps sparking interest and shows that Halsey doesn’t necessarily stick to the same vibes over and over again, despite what the first songs implied (maybe just unhappy placement). The further the record proceeds the happier I am that I kept on listening cause some proper gems show up out of the dark, such as Haunting with its endearing rhythm yet calming aura.

Towards the end though, the hopes that got built up, all drop down again as the last couple of songs don’t impress much once more.

While I get how Halsey speaks to a lot of people, girls in particular, of the younger generation, I don’t feel that Badlands is as much of a huge differential record as it gets praised for (at least from what I've seen on the web). Without trying to bash her, I'm just not sure if I simply have very high expectations and easily get bored, or if it isn’t for me in general. None the less, I do appreciate her persona and what she stands for, plus I do enjoy a few of her songs and will probably continue to check out anything she releases in the future. But this record won't be in my Top Album countdown of 2015.

Overall: 6/10

Favorite track(s): Castle, Colors, Haunting

Cheerio xx