Halsey is reflecting on her beginnings.
Born Ashley Nicolette Frangipane, she changed her name to Halsey – which also happens to be an anagram of Ashley – when she was working on her debut album, Badlands.
In a recent interview, she revealed that, “me wanting to do this was so far-fetched” and she felt that at the time, “being me wasn’t enough.”
“At the time, I felt that Ashley didn’t deserve to be famous and successful because she wasn’t that special, but if I made Halsey, maybe she could be,” she told Cosmopolitan.
She also opened up about what it was like for her in her early days.
“People hear about me and they want to paint my story as a rags to riches tale, but that’s not true. It was a very slow and painful process,” she shared. “When I look back on it, I’m so proud of that teenage girl who dropped [my first album] Badlands because I had all the odds against me: I didn’t know anybody in the music industry. I was from New Jersey. I had no f–king money, and there was no way I was going to college.”
And becoming Halsey allowed her to have a different perspective on what she could achieve.
“[Changing my name] gave me the opportunity to create a new persona that wasn’t bound by the expectations I had for myself or the limitations that others placed on me because of my upbringing or my socioeconomic situation,” she said. “I created a person, and she could do everything. There was no way that Ashley was going to become a king, but I made a new name for myself and took her to paranormal, supernatural heights.”
