Halsey Reveals She's "Not Allowed" To Make A New Album

Don’t expect new music from Halsey anytime soon. The singer, who uses she/they pronouns, opened up about how their label is currently preventing them from making another album. And the reason she’s being silenced is incredibly frustrating.

“I can’t make an album right now. I’m not allowed to,” Halsey said in a Sept. 18 Apple Music interview. “That’s the reality, because The Great Impersonator didn't perform the way they thought it was going to.”

Halsey released her latest record The Great Impersonator at the end of 2024. It debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard charts, selling 93,000 units in its first week. Despite Halsey knowing “that’s a pretty big first week,” they claimed their label Columbia Records is still holding them to the standards of their 2020 pop album Manic, which sold over double The Great Impersonator in its first week.

“They want Manic numbers from me,” Halsey said. “I can't do that every single time. It should be good enough that I do it once in a while. But it’s not. And what would be considered a success for most artists — 100,000 albums first week, in an era where we don’t sell physical music, with no radio hit — but it’s a failure in the context of the kind of success I’ve had previously.”

While Halsey looks back on the triumph of her Manic era fondly, she recognizes the pitfalls of moving away from pop music, but still being treated like a pop star. “That's the hardest part of having been a pop star once. Because I'm not one anymore,” Halsey said. “But I'm being compared to numbers and to other people that I don't consider lateral to me.”

“The comparison is ‘Why isn’t she doing Taylor Swift numbers?’ Are you f*cking kidding me!? I made an experimental concept album about how I almost f*cking died. I’m not going to do those numbers,” Halsey continued. “I’m doing pretty damn good... But it’s not good enough, because it’s not the pop star I once was. Even though I’m actively making the choice to not be.”

The singer concluded that if they were being treated like the genre artist they are now, it’d be much clearer that they are still incredibly successful. “If you actually compared me to the other types of artists who are making the type of music that I am making, I’m f*cking killing it. But that’s not what I’m up against,” Halsey said. “And because of that, I’m at the bottom of a category that I’m not in anymore, when I should be at the top of a category that I’m in now. And it’s really hard.”

This isn’t the first time Halsey has accused her label of preventing her from releasing music. Back in 2022, they accused their former record label of not allowing them to drop a song until the marketing team could “fake a viral moment on TikTok” first.