Halsey shares an update on her health and releases new single
The singer said she was "lucky to be alive" ahead of the release of "The End"
Halsey shared a sober update on her ongoing health journey on Instagram this week. “[L]ong story short, i’m Lucky to be alive,” she wrote in the post’s caption, in which she also tagged the Lupus Research Alliance and Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.
While the pop singer didn’t explicitly reference either of these diagnoses by name in a series of corresponding videos, she did show herself receiving multiple rounds of treatment. In the first, she says she feels “like an old lady.” “I told myself I’m giving myself two more years to be sick,” she continues, to an unseen camera person. “And at 3o I’m having a rebirth and I’m not gonna be sick and I’m gonna look super hot and have lots of energy and I’m just gonna get to redo my twenties in my thirties.”
The post also doubles as a teaser for Halsey’s untitled fifth studio album, from which she released the first single. The song, titled “The End,” is an emotional, stripped-down ballad, produced by indie darlings Alex G and Michael Uzowuru (whose previous credits include work with SZA, Frank Ocean, Beyoncé, and more), that pivots hard from the Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross-produced sound of her last album, If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power.
“Every couple of years now, a doctor says I’m sick/Pulls out a brand new bag of tricks, and then they lay it on me/And at first, it was my brain, then a skeleton in pain/And I don’t like to complain, but I’m saying sorry,” she sings in the song’s opening verse. If the rest of the record follows this pattern, it might be her most raw and personal yet. “It means a lot to me and I love it,” she wrote of the single in an announcement post yesterday.
This is not the first time Halsey has publicly discussed her health issues. In 2022, she wrote on Instagram (via The Guardian): “I’ve been sick. For a long time. My sicknesses just have their names now. I went to doctors for 8 years. Trying to figure out what was wrong with me. I was called crazy and anxious and lazy amongst other things. I changed my entire lifestyle.”
In the past, she’s revealed that she’s been diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, immune disorders Sjögren’s syndrome and Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS), and POTS (postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome) which affects heart rate and the nervous system. Previously, she’s also been open about her battle with endometriosis.