BY DC CUEVA
From YouTuber Rachel Levin to Andres Rodriguez & his Caucus Challenge friends and so many others, those from all walks of life have been featured here, along with the many celebrities, athletes and key figures of the day that have crossed paths with cast members of these shows. We've featured so many of them since we began covering this beat five years ago, and is part of making our look at MTV Reality appeal to both the casual viewers and the passionate fans.
Back in 2016, we featured in a small sense an up-and-coming pop singer who took at the stage at MTV's annual celebration of outstanding achievements on the silver screen, but who has since taken on greater heights thanks to being part of that year's most memorable song. So much has happened since then for Halsey, and with the recent news of her having a high-profile celebrity breakup while on tour right now, we thought about revisiting and updating this story, this time to cover not only that but also something that was discovered this past weekend.
 |
| Halsey (center) w/ Ammo and Kailah (TW @Kailah_Casillas) |
For the girl known to her inner circle as Ashley Frangipane, pursuing these musical dreams also came at a price: financial hardships first encountered in high school led to her dropping out of college, and had a battle with both recreational drugs and bipolar disorder, having to stay up all night living in the basement of friends' homes for a time and on just low funds on her credit card. As a last resort, she turned to the one form of therapy she had loved the most in music, and chose an anagram of her real name to be her stage identity, which also makes reference to the Halsey Street station where the L and T trains run in the New York City subway system through the northern part of Brooklyn where she spent much of her teenage years.
One night at a party, a producer came up to her to collaborate on a song he had produced and wanted her to sing on it. "Ghost," a track about her ex boyfriend, was posted on Halsey's SoundCloud channel a few weeks after it was recorded, and immediately gained both online exposure and record labels flooding her phone and emails with the hopes of scoring them. In the end, Universal's dance and EDM label Astralwerks won the signing war and gave Halsey more creative control than the others who wanted her to sign elsewhere.
While she developed a off & on relationship with Norwegian producer Lido when she dropped a debut EP, Halsey's breakthrough came at the 2015 South By Southwest festival, where she was the top trending artist the night she took the stage in Austin. It landed her an opening act gig with Imagine Dragons on their 2015 tour, but it also where she went through the most traumatic experience any woman goes through: she became pregnant while on tour, but it was a month before Badlands was released that she received the tragic news that she suffered a miscarriage - one she cited was the busy work schedule she had that prevented her from being a mom.
Despite the heavy heart, that full-length debut dropped in late August, one where her creative freedom showed in co-writing every song in an inaugural studio effort that doubled as a concept album... one where her mental state was reflected in the theme of a dystopian society. Badlands debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200 chart, and two years after its summer release it has sold over half a million copies in the States, netting her a RIAA platinum plaque and four gold singles for all of her released singles. It landed her an opening act gig with The Weeknd, a featured spot on "The Feeling" on Justin Bieber's Purpose and a lipstick named for herself by MAC Cosmetics.
That night at the MTV Movie Awards, Kailah got to meet Halsey and captioned on Instagram, "I'm still fan-girling about meeting @IamHalsey at the #MTVMovieAwards," and added on Twitter, "I think I've listening to the @Halsey album BADLANDS everyday for the past 4 months and it's still not old." And later that month, Halsey took the stage at the 2016 edition of Coachella, sharing a bill that included Calvin Harris, Sia, Guns N' Roses, Zedd, Ice Cube, Ellie Goulding, Rae Sremmurd and two artists who would then help her change her career trajectory.
The Chainsmokers first burst on the scene in 2013 with "#Selfie," and two years later Drew Taggert & Alex Pall became regular Billboard Hot 100 staples when "Rozes" and "Don't Let Me Down" netted the New York duo platinum records. When they performed at that same 2016 Coachella, they were at work on a Blink-182-inspired mid-tempo track called "Closer," which also marked the transition from TCS being simply EDM artists to now having one of the members actually sing. When initial plans to have then-Fifth Harmony's Camila Cabello join them on the track didn't get anywhere, they asked Halsey to step in. "Closer" was released two years ago this week (July 29, 2016) and after debuting in the Top 10 that it would stay for eight months, within a month it began a 12-week reign at #1 in the U.S. and topping the charts in 20 other countries - becoming the biggest hit of 2016 with million-plus sales and billion-plus streams & views on Spotify and YouTube.
Being part of a musical touchstone in the digital music age not only made The Chainsmokers the poster boys of EDM, it also brought more exposure to Halsey as nearly a year after "Closer," she dropped her sophomore effort Hopeless Fountain Kingdom. Like its predecessor, it was a concept album that turned its attention to romance in a Romeo & Juliet-like love tale, inspired by her breakup a year earlier with a producer on Badlands, Norweigan producer Lido, but also featured more radio-friendly songs than her debut. It debuted at #1 on the BB 200 and featured her highest-charting solo effort to date in second single "Bad At Love." And during this year, she gave a poem to protesters at the Women's March on Washington to tell stories of sexual assault & violence as an advocate of those causes in the #MeToo movement as well as suicide prevention. And she also garnered a cameo in Bradley Cooper's A Star is Born, and voiceovers in Teen Titans Go! To the Movies and Scooby-Doo.
While Hopeless Fountain Kingdom was topping the charts, Halsey popped up as a special guest last August in New Orleans at the finale of a tour headlined by Bay Area rapper G-Eazy on a track he debuted to fans called, "Him & I." Given how talented she is, he had her at the top of the list of artists he wanted to collaborate with on his sophomore album, The Beautiful & Damned which dropped in December. But after she gave him a several-seconds smooch at the end of a performance of a track likened to Beyonce & Jay-Z's "Bonnie & Clyde" in the Big Easy, it would be the beginning of the latest romance to delight the music world and take over social media, taking them from award show red carpets to Saturday Night Live.
But last month while they were even in the studio working on more songs together - and in a move that came out of the blue, fans everywhere were left to wonder if they still believed in true love when she and G-Eazy decided to call time on their relationship. It was not because of any wrongdoing as celebrity relationships usually end, but a cordial one due to their busy work schedules, similar to Logic and Jessica Andrea divorcing but remaining close. No doubt, this left Kailah and everyone who had adored them in a state of shock.
Hal wrote on Instagram, "G-Eazy and I are taking some time apart. I'm eager to continue the upcoming passage of time dedicating myself to my art and my career and the duration of my tour. I wish him the best. Thanks for respecting our privacy at this time." This came over a month after he was cuffed in Sweden for drug possession, an alleged fight with security guards and avoiding time behind bars in paying just a $9,000 fine and an undisclosed settlement with the attack's victim.
That night at the MTV Movie Awards, Kailah got to meet Halsey and captioned on Instagram, "I'm still fan-girling about meeting @IamHalsey at the #MTVMovieAwards," and added on Twitter, "I think I've listening to the @Halsey album BADLANDS everyday for the past 4 months and it's still not old." And later that month, Halsey took the stage at the 2016 edition of Coachella, sharing a bill that included Calvin Harris, Sia, Guns N' Roses, Zedd, Ice Cube, Ellie Goulding, Rae Sremmurd and two artists who would then help her change her career trajectory.
 |
| TCS & Halsey at 2016 AMA's |
Being part of a musical touchstone in the digital music age not only made The Chainsmokers the poster boys of EDM, it also brought more exposure to Halsey as nearly a year after "Closer," she dropped her sophomore effort Hopeless Fountain Kingdom. Like its predecessor, it was a concept album that turned its attention to romance in a Romeo & Juliet-like love tale, inspired by her breakup a year earlier with a producer on Badlands, Norweigan producer Lido, but also featured more radio-friendly songs than her debut. It debuted at #1 on the BB 200 and featured her highest-charting solo effort to date in second single "Bad At Love." And during this year, she gave a poem to protesters at the Women's March on Washington to tell stories of sexual assault & violence as an advocate of those causes in the #MeToo movement as well as suicide prevention. And she also garnered a cameo in Bradley Cooper's A Star is Born, and voiceovers in Teen Titans Go! To the Movies and Scooby-Doo.
But last month while they were even in the studio working on more songs together - and in a move that came out of the blue, fans everywhere were left to wonder if they still believed in true love when she and G-Eazy decided to call time on their relationship. It was not because of any wrongdoing as celebrity relationships usually end, but a cordial one due to their busy work schedules, similar to Logic and Jessica Andrea divorcing but remaining close. No doubt, this left Kailah and everyone who had adored them in a state of shock.
Hal wrote on Instagram, "G-Eazy and I are taking some time apart. I'm eager to continue the upcoming passage of time dedicating myself to my art and my career and the duration of my tour. I wish him the best. Thanks for respecting our privacy at this time." This came over a month after he was cuffed in Sweden for drug possession, an alleged fight with security guards and avoiding time behind bars in paying just a $9,000 fine and an undisclosed settlement with the attack's victim.
 |
| Shanley (right-middle) & Halsey (extreme right) (IG @ShandaThaPanda) |
Also last weekend, Halsey added another member of Team MTV to her fandom: this spring, MTV viewers saw Shanley McIntee return four years after being part of a memorable first season of Are You The One?, known to those for her romance with Chris T. and for her blowup after a Truth Booth vote saw them being split up. This time, she showed up to another maiden voyage of a new romantic reality series in the American version of Ex On The Beach as the ex of a guy who she met on the dating series' Second Chances spinoff in Australia, Cameron Kolbo. He also had his own exes story in having dated his Season 4 perfect match Mikala Thomas and then Taylor Selfridge from Season 5 (the series' only cast to not win the jackpot).
Halsey and Shanley shared a moment there backstage at MSND along with the pop star's official photographer and friend, Nathan Groff, as well as some of their friends. The three-time MTV star posted that picture on Instagram and captioned below, "we good love AND joy."
Halsey has been through a lot in what, next month, will be 24 years when she turns that age at the end of September. When we first featured her in that picture with Kailah at the MTV Awards, little did she know that in a short time she would become part of music's next generation who has now emerged onto the scene in a big way. Being part of an iconic song and an iconic romance has plenty going for Halsey as her Hopeless Fountain Kingdom tour rolls along, and with voiceover roles in two animated movies to come, the sky's definitely the limit.
▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪
In a season that has pressed on since Kailah got kicked out for getting into a fight with MTV British import Melissa Reeves, last night saw the twists keep coming on The Challenge Final Reckoning with those who are not actually eliminated from the game taking center stage. We'll be covering that and this week's episode of Floribama Shore when DCBLOG goes Inside MTV Reality coming up this weekend. Plus, we'll kick off our countdown to Are You The One? Season 7 not with our season preview which comes next week, but with one of its own getting to chat it up with those on one of TV's hottest summer shows which crowns a champion tomorrow night. Be with us then.
- I AM DC
#DCBLOG
No comments:
Post a Comment
Got something on your mind? Let us know! But please be mindful and do not post spam or negative comments (due to that, all comments are subject to blogger approval... and we reserve the right to disable these sections if things get way out of hand).