Halsey says new song is being held to ransom until they “fake” viral TikTok
"My record company is saying that I can’t release it unless they can fake a viral moment on TikTok”
By Joe Goggins
Halsey has claimed that their newest track is being withheld by their label until they record a promotional TikTok clip.
The US pop powerhouse, who won rave reviews last August with fourth studio album ‘If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power’, took to the video-sharing platform to let fans know the state of play as regards their latest song. In a post titled “I’m tired”, they said that “marketing” was preventing them from putting out the untitled new track, which plays in the background. They say they would ideally release it “ASAP”.
“My record company is saying that I can’t release it unless they can fake a viral moment on TikTok,” they said. “Everything is marketing,” they added. “And [the label] are doing this to basically every artist these days.” Fans had already been primed for fresh material from Halsey, after they hinted in March that a more mainstream album was already in the pipeline.
“Due to personal reasons I will be making a pop album,” Halsey wrote on their Instagram story. “I have an incredible song that I could put out as a single for radio next but I feel like that’s insane to do bc I haven’t even toured iichliwp [‘If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power’] yet idk. I actually have a few. Idk what to dooooo.”
Halsey is now on the road in their native US on the ‘Love and Power’ tour, with a host of arena dates in the diary before they cross the pond to make headline turns at Reading and Leeds festivals in the UK in August. On the opening night of the tour last Tuesday (May 17), at the iTHINK Financial Amphitheatre in West Palm Beach, Florida, they screened a video that made a impassioned case for the preservation of the Roe v. Wade legal ruling that allows abortion in the United States.
In the light of a leaked draft opinion from the country’s supreme court that suggested the statute is in jeopardy, Halsey rolled a clip during their performance of ‘Nightmare’ that said: “Abortion is one of the safest medical procedures performed today, more than 99 per cent safe in fact. Nearly 8 in 10 Americans oppose overturning Roe v. Wade. Black women suffer from maternal mortality at rates three times higher than white women.”