After the incredible success of her debut album “Badlands”, expectations for Halsey are higher than ever when she announced that we are entering into a new era. Her sophomore album – Hopeless Fountain Kingdom – is set to be released on June 2.
Badlands was lyrically, musically, and visually amazing. All of her carefully put-together videos enriched the Badlands experience and it is only fitting that the hype for Hopeless Fountain Kingdom will be even bigger.
On the 4th of April, her new single, “Now or Never”, dropped. The video for the song is Halsey’s directorial debut, and it is imbued with beautiful imagery and colour. Each detail so carefully crafted, you could watch it time and time again and still find something new and incredible in it. The Romeo and Juliet theme is a risky approach, given how it can easily fall into tired and true tropes and clichés. That said, from what we have seen so far we can trust Halsey to stay true to herself and keep it original and cool.
She is running with the team to the extreme; that is to say, no one can accuse Halsey of not doing the absolute most to provide her fans with an experience. Starting with a number of Twitter accounts meant to add depth to her characters and the two houses – House of Angelus and House of Aureum. Tweeting cryptic messages and images, which possibly relate to the story she will tell with this album. Everything about the set up and promotion of HFK is thoughtful and purposeful.
Now or Never has the sound of a Halsey song. It’s beautiful and hypnotic, the chorus is memorable, and it’s easy to slip into playing it on repeat over and over. While she bemoans her love, the video displays a constrastingly dynamic scene, reminiscent of Baz Luhrman’s interpretation Romeo+Juliet, complete with a car chase, gunfire, and color coded symbolism. An ambiguous ending promises that HFK will be like nothing we’ve seen from Halsey before.
Now, it’s left to wonder if the other videos in the album will follow up from Now or Never, or if they will take us in a different direction, much like the videos for Badlands did – showing us alternative versions of the world Halsey has so lovingly built.
On her Twitter, Halsey promises “HFK has many sides as well. #NowOrNever is one delicate side of a bigger story.” What’s left for us is to be excited. Pre-order Hopeless Fountain Kingdom. And until it’s release listen to Now or Never on repeat until we can sink our teeth into the rest of Halsey’s beautiful, and doubtlessly impressive, work.
