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Halsey is one of the most interesting characters in the music industry. Real name Ashley Nicolette Frangipane, this artist managed to achieve considerable critical acclaim in just a few short years in her mid-20s. 

Beginnings

Halsey was born in Edison, New Jersey on September 29th, 1994, to Nicole, a medical emergency technician, and Chris Frangipane, a car dealership manager. During her early years, the family moved around a lot and she attended many different schools. Her parents raised her Catholic. 

Halsey’s early life was anything but easy. Unfortunately, bullies tormented her in school for a long time and she was unable to find support. At the age of 17, she tragically attempted to take her own life. 

However that wasn’t the end for the singer. Despite fighting a tough mental health condition, she continued trying to improve her life through artistic means. 

Rise To Fame

When she was 24, she began writing music. Around that time, she met her then-boyfriend in the Brooklyn area of New York whose name was Halsey. She liked the name (and him at the time) so much that it became the stage name she would later use. 

For Halsey, music was a welcome creative outlet – as it is for many people – and she found she could finally jump straight into something she loved and really get lost in it, finding herself in the coveted flow state. It was the first time she had felt like she was doing something that was bigger than herself. 

Even so, it wasn’t a simple road to stardom for the young singer. While she successfully graduated from her high school in New Jersey, things were still tough for her financially for a long time. She wanted to go to school at the Rhode Island School of Design but had to attend a community college instead because she didn’t have enough money to continue her studies. When she later flunked out of college, her parents kicked her out and she went to live in a basement in Lower Manhattan. 

But that wasn’t the end of the story for Halsey. She started posting videos of herself singing on social media platforms, like YouTube and Tumblr, and playing around with different sounds. Later, she uploaded Ghost, a song about her ex-boyfriend onto Soundcloud. It nearly became an overnight hit and got people talking about her. 

The big breakthrough, though, came in 2014 when she released Room 93. The Billboard 200 put her at number three in the Top Heatseekers chart, and she got an invitation to perform live at media festival South by Southwest. 

Unexpected Stardom

Of course, once Halsey became established, it was nothing but massive progress from that point. The singer continued to make breakthrough music and earned a legion of adoring fans. 
She’s best known mainly for her song New Americana, and has gained a reputation for being a stupendously fierce and independent woman, firing the imagination of millions of young people in New York and across the U.S.

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