Changes

“It happened by accident,” Halsey tells Apple Music of her fourth full-length. “I wasn't trying to make a political record, or a record that was drowning in its own profundity—I was just writing about how I feel. And I happen to be experiencing something that is very nuanced and very complicated.” Written while she was pregnant with her first child, If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power finds the pop superstar sifting through dark thoughts and deep fears, offering a picture of maternity that fully acknowledges its emotional and physical realities—what it might mean for one’s body, one’s sense of purpose and self. “The reason that the album has sort of this horror theme is because this experience, in a way, has its horrors,” she says. “I think everyone who has heard me yearn for motherhood for so long would have expected me to write an album that was full of gratitude. Instead, I was like, ‘No, this shit is so scary and so horrifying. My body's changing and I have no control over anything.’ Pregnancy for some women is a dream—and for some people it’s a fucking nightmare. That's the thing that nobody else talks about.”

“I think being pregnant in the public eye is a really difficult thing, because as a performer, so much of your identity is predicated on being sexually desirable,” she says. “Socially, women have been reduced to two categories: You are the Madonna or the whore. So if you are sexually desirable or a sexual being, you're unfit for motherhood. But as soon as you are motherly or maternal and somebody does want you as the mother of their child, you're unfuckable. Those are your options; those things are not compatible, and they haven’t been for centuries.”