In a scene that would fit nicely in their music video for “Lucky,” Halsey has taken to Tumblr to express regret over their return to music. Halsey, who recently appeared in Ti West’s slasher MaXXXine and released a re-working of Britney Spears’ 2000 hit “Lucky,” describes their “own fans” as “hands down meaner to me than any other people on the planet.” While that sounds bad, they qualify the statement with “Not speaking for all of you, of course.” Nevertheless, Halsey notices a shift in their fandom from a “minority that were awful to me” to “a majority” that has “only stuck around to chime in occasionally with their opinion of how much they hate me or how awful I am.”
We’re not sure what brought this on, but it’s certainly disappointing to hear that Halsey, whose latest music video and single focuses on their very real health issues, is dealing with the toxic wing of their fanbase. Two years ago, doctors diagnosed Halsey with a rare T-cell lymphoproliferative disorder, and they depict their struggles in the video, but apparently, the majority of rude fans have led the musician to “regret” returning after treatment.
“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,” they write. “Especially after years of hiding from the interactions for fear that this EXACT thing would happen. I don’t know man. I almost lost my life. I am not gonna do anything that doesn’t make me happy anymore. 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 anymore and I want to crawl in a hole and I regret coming back.”
Shortly after, Halsey posted again, saying, “Anyway. I’m on my way to a PET scan. And uploading lucky stripped. Because this is the insane irony my life has become. I’m a person. Not a character in a music video.”
“Lucky (Stripped)” refers to the music video for an acoustic version of the song.
We should note that we don’t totally know what backlash Halsey is talking about. Initially, Spears denounced Halsey’s version of “Lucky” before retracting their comments mere moments later, claiming that her Instagram had been hacked.
Some within the fandom caught a since-deleted post from Tumblr that provides a little more context, posted around the same time as the regret note. Before deleting the post, Halsey wrote that their illness elicited two responses from some in their life. “The first decided it was too heavy and they didn’t even wanna touch it and they disappeared. The second was angry with me that I was too sick to TAKE from anymore so they were cruel to me instead.” On the fandom front, Halsey claims they “learned that only 1% of my active fans have even bothered to listen to the song. But the conversation about me is SO loud and SO wicked, and it’s coming from a much larger percentage than that.”
There are some on their social channels criticizing the song, treating the star’s Instagram like Halsey’s Yelp page, complaining that this very obvious homage to Britney Spears is actually more of a ripoff. Strangely, none of the musicologists following Halsey recognize the song also pulls from Monica’s “Angel Of Mine” and adds a dash of Des’ree’s “You Gotta Be” for good measure. Halsey obviously has access to stronger analytics regarding the success of the single than we do, but we hope that Halsey gets away from whatever negativity that plagues them. Truly, Halsey, if you’re reading this, don’t listen to the haters. Listen to Des’ree.