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Halsey’s ‘The Great Impersonator’ Is Confessional Pop at Its Most Ambitious and Devastating: Album Review
Halsey's 'Great Impersonator' is as sad as it is sprawling and ambitious — and, as one of the year's best albums, well worth the emotional investment.
Some of the material is so raw in its confessional power that you might harbor the suspicion may arise that Halsey, after having penned some of the harshest and most revealing songs of her career, decided to come up with a different kind of musical overlay for the album to give it more of a “fun” side to go with the heartbreaking one. If you’re on socials or pay attention much to pop culture, you’ve probably already seen the campaign in which Halsey previewed one by one all the heroes she is saluting in some way with these songs, posting photos in which she has elaborately recreated exact iconic looks of Cher, Kate Bush, Linda Ronstadt, Dolly Parton, Amy Lee, PJ Harvey, Stevie Nicks, Bruce Springsteen, Dolores O’Riordan, Aaliyah, Tori Amos, Joni Mitchell, David Bowie and Bjork. But the song that is most likely to be immediately discussed by fans, and the album’s most soul-flattening burst of sorrow and rage, is “Life of the Spider (Draft).” The parenthetical subtitle signals that this is a spontaneous piano-and-vocal demo that Halsey didn’t dare to re-record, and the assignation of Tori Amos as the designated influence is an indication that this is “Me and a Gun”-level rough stuff (although it doesn’t describe a literal assault).
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