Halsey Discusses Her ‘Female Rage’ Album: No Full Credit for Nine Inch Nails

Ahead of their forthcoming album The Great Impersonator, Halsey is ready to set the record straight on the success attributed to their previous album, If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power.

In a cover story interview with Rolling Stone UK on Wednesday, Oct. 16, the pop star (who uses she/they pronouns), 30, opened up about not being credited for her work and ideas over the years.

“I really hate when it happens and it’s a person who refuses to admit that you’re dope but then they’re stealing from you or they’re referencing you or they’re writing about you,” Halsey said. “That always lights a little juvenile fire in my belly.”

In particular, the New Jersey-born singer revealed that they’d like more credit for the concept and success of their 2021 album, If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power, made in collaboration with Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross of the legendary industrial rock outfit Nine Inch Nails.

“Is everyone OK?” she said of the people who credit the band for being “the ones that made it good.” “You think that two rock dads wrote my female rage album about the horrors of being pregnant and accepting suburbia?”

Released in August 2021, a month after their son, Ender, was born, IICHLIWP navigates Halsey’s pregnancy and childbirth through a “body horror” lens, per NME.

In an Instagram post revealing the album artwork in July 2021, she wrote: “This album is a concept album about the joys and horrors of pregnancy and childbirth. It was very important to me that the cover art conveyed the sentiment of my journey over the past few months. The dichotomy of the Madonna and the Whore. The idea that me as a sexual being and my body as a vessel and gift to my child are two concepts that can co-exist peacefully and powerfully.”

In 2021 interview with NME, Halsey recalled how she approached Nine Inch Nails with the offer to produce the album, saying, “I’m not arrogant enough to believe that I have anything new to offer you, but this album is about pregnancy, gender identity, body horror. The most important thing to me is that this album has tension – it needs to be visceral, or I’m doing a disservice to the message.”

The “I Should Be Sad” performer is gearing up to release their fifth studio album, The Great Impersonator on Oct. 25. While managing life with chronic illness, including their lupus and T-Cell disorder diagnosis, Halsey came up with the title.

“There was already this magic trick brewing subconsciously in a sleight of hand of ‘don’t notice how sick I am.’ I was like a magician,” she told Rolling Stone UK. “I felt like a professional Halsey impersonator.”