Having recently announced her second album Hopeless Fountain Kingdom, Halsey is in the middle of a promotional blitz.
As such, she’s been spilling all kinds of interesting tidbits about her next project, from the breakup that inspired it, to how she rediscovered herself in the process of making it.
The latest piece of information on the LP, though, is about a specific track — namely, the one she shares with Fifth Harmony’s Lauren Jauregui.
“This is the first song that I ever wrote where I openly used female pronouns,” Halsey recently revealed to Zach Sang, adding that she tried to keep her previous LP gender neutral.
The songs her new album switch between male and female pronouns, reflecting the real-life relationships that loosely inspired the music.
That’s why Jauregui, who came out as bisexual last November, was the perfect fit for a collaboration.
If I want this song to be believable it needs to be real, so I’m not going to put a girl on the song to sing who’s straight. I’m just not going to do it. So I reached out to Lauren and she came in and she cut the vocal and it sounds awesome.”
Strangers tackles what happens when Halsey’s and Jauregui’s characters meet at a house party.
I just love that Lauren and I are two women who have a mainstream pop presence doing a love song for the LGBTQ community. It’s unheard of. It’s very rare to see it from a female perspective. … Sam Smith obviously made waves making records that were so human and so amazing and emotional that it didn’t matter what your sexuality was, you just identified with what he was singing. That’s kind of what I wanted to do with Strangers.“
Watch Halsey’s full interview, below.
