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Halsey Is Shady And This Is Why

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Halsey went from sleeping on friends’ couches to topping the charts in under two years — and the controversies piled up almost as fast as the hits.

Ashley Nicolette Frangipane, the New Jersey-raised singer known as Halsey, built her origin story around a Holiday Inn party where she says she met “a music guy” who helped her record a song in someone’s basement and upload it to SoundCloud. She’s told Rolling Stone that five record labels called within days and the track was already charting by the next morning. That whirlwind rise into pop’s A-list, capped by 2016’s “Closer” with The Chainsmokers, has come with a string of public flare-ups that Nicki Swift’s “Halsey Is Shady And This Is Why” lays out one by one.

• In June 2017, Halsey called rapper Iggy Azalea a “f***ing moron” with a “disregard for black culture,” a comment Azalea later brushed off as youthful bad judgment.
• In April 2018, Halsey tweeted that hotel toiletries amount to “perfumed watered down white people shampoo,” sparking an online debate over inclusivity in haircare.
• In January 2018, paparazzi photographed Halsey on a Miami yacht holding one nostril shut over what appeared to be a line of powder, fueling speculation tied to lyrics from her own “Bad at Love.”

The Holiday Inn Origin Story

Halsey’s version of her own discovery reads like a fairy tale with rough edges: a community college dropout at 19, couch-surfing, then suddenly fielding calls from five labels after one basement recording hit SoundCloud. That speed — from unknown to chart presence almost overnight — is part of why Nicki Swift frames her as a figure whose fame outran her filter. The same video that traces her breakout also points to a pattern of impulsive public behavior, including run-ins with fans and unusually candid disclosures about living with bipolar disorder, long before “Closer” made her a fixture on Top 40 radio.

Picking Fights With Pop’s Biggest Names

By June 2017, Halsey was already tangled in two separate feuds in the same month. She criticized how pop music treats bisexuality in a way widely read as aimed at Katy Perry and Demi Lovato, drawing a response from Lovato — a spat that echoes the kind of celebrity-versus-celebrity friction chronicled in People Katy Perry Treated Like Trash. Days later, she went after Iggy Azalea directly, calling her a “f***ing moron” over what she described as a “disregard for black culture.” Azalea’s response downplayed the whole exchange as a younger version of herself acting out — not exactly a resolution, but enough to let the news cycle move on.

“F***ing moron” with a “disregard for black culture” — Halsey’s June 2017 shot at Iggy Azalea that Azalea later chalked up to youthful poor judgment.

The Shampoo Tweet and the Yacht Photo

Nearly a year later, in April 2018, Halsey stirred a different kind of backlash when she tweeted that hotel toiletry lines exclude people of color by offering only “perfumed watered down white people shampoo,” pairing the complaint with a push for better haircare access in psychiatric facilities. Three months earlier, in January 2018, paparazzi had caught her on a yacht off Miami holding one nostril shut, appearing to snort something off her hand — an image that instantly drew comparisons to lyrics from her own hit “Bad at Love.” Neither moment came with a full explanation from Halsey herself, which is part of what kept both stories alive in tabloid coverage for weeks.

Fighting the Tabloids on Her Own Turf

Halsey hasn’t been shy about calling out the outlets covering her. She’s repeatedly gone after the Daily Mail, most notably in early 2018 after the paper placed a censor bar over her black undergarments at the amfAR Gala to manufacture the appearance of a wardrobe malfunction that, by her account, never happened. That kind of direct pushback against tabloid framing puts her in the same conversation as the kind of media pile-ons detailed in Reporters Who Ruined Their Careers On Social Media, though in Halsey’s case it was the outlet, not the star, doing the damage control.

The Chainsmokers Falling-Out

Even Halsey’s own hitmaking partnership wasn’t immune. After Chainsmokers member Alex Pall publicly panned Lady Gaga’s single “Perfect Illusion” in late 2016, Halsey fired back by calling Gaga an “icon” — a defense that briefly escalated when Drew Taggart’s Twitter account sent an insult her way, only for Taggart to later claim the account had been hacked. It’s the kind of quick-turn alliance-to-friction story that shows up across the industry, similar to the dynamics broken down in Celebs Who Started Out Friends And Ended Up Enemies. Whether or not the hack claim held up, the exchange never escalated further — “Closer” kept playing on the radio, and both acts moved on without ever fully addressing it in public again.