Halsey slams ‘mean’ fans for reaction to new single: ‘I regret coming back’
Halsey says she ‘regrets coming back’ to the music industry due to fan backlash. (YouTube/@halsey)
Singer-songwriter Halsey has addressed the backlash to her new single “Lucky”, saying so-called fans are “meaner” to her than “any other people on the planet”.
On Friday (26 July), the three-time Grammy nominee released “Lucky”, the first single from her fifth studio album, but she is seemingly unimpressed with how people feel about it.
“My own fans are hands down meaner to me than any other people on the planet. Not speaking for all of you, of course,” she wrote on her Tumblr account tiredandlonelymuse on Tuesday (30 July).
“It used to be just a minority that were awful to me and now it seems like a majority have only stuck around to chime in occasionally with their opinion of how much they hate me or how awful I am,” she continued.
“It’s hard to want to engage in a space that is completely devoid of any kindness, sympathy, patience, or, to be honest, human decency – especially after years of hiding from the interactions for fear that this exact thing would happen.”
She didn’t make it clear to which comments she was referring.
In June, the bisexual star – who uses both she and they pronouns – revealed she had been privately navigating a series of health conditions, including the immune-system condition lupus, and a rare white-blood-cell disorder.
That same month, she divulged details of her health struggles in “The End”, her first solo single in two years, singing on the track: “And at first, it was my brain, then a skeleton in pain.”
Continuing her Tumblr post, the singer said: “I almost lost my life. I am not gonna do anything that doesn’t make me happy any more. I can’t spiritually afford it.
“When I got sick, all I could think about was getting better so I could come back and be a part of this again, but I don’t even know what *this* is any more and I want to crawl in a hole. I regret coming back.”
“Lucky” samples the 2000 Britney Spears single of the same name, and further details Halsey’s experience with her illness. It also refers to attempts to contend with fame.
“I told everybody I was fine for a whole damn year, and that’s the biggest lie of my career,” she sings.
While Halsey revealed that Spears had given her permission to use the sample, the “Toxic” singer was seemingly unimpressed with the music video, writing on X/Twitter that she felt “harassed, violated and bullied” by it.
The “Lucky” video made reference to Spears’ music video for her song and the star’s own troubling experiences with fame.
However, shortly after posting about Halsey’s video on social media, Spears’ comments were deleted and replaced with: “Fake news. That was not me on my phone. I love Halsey and that’s why I deleted it.”
In response, Halsey wrote back: “And I love Britney. I always have and always will. You were the first person who ever made me realise what it means to feel inspired. You continue to inspire me every day.”
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