RC@5: Manic by Halsey

Record Club covered this album exactly five years ago. I gave it another listen this week. Here are some thoughts.

Manic

Halsey

Week 52: January 26-February 1, 2020

A few idle thoughts, and a meta query to wrap it up.

— The Sunday write-ups during these first couple years are incredibly bare, at least compared to the bullshit I try to put together these days. Pretty much no information regarding the artist. Crucially, RC had not yet grappled with the idea of non-binary pronouns. I don't even know what Halsey's preferences were during the last week in January 2020, but I'm assuming that there would have at least been a discussion as to whether they/them was appropriate here. As of now, Halsey is they/her, meaning that the artist is accepting of either one. I like looking at this pronoun choice as "good practice," since I am terrible at misgendering people with pronouns. For the rest of this otherwise extremely brief blog post, I will be using "they/them" for Halsey.

— A few people mentioned the fact that Halsey touches on a few different genres here. I like it. I feel like this is indicative of the streaming generation, where every style of music is at our fingertips, and instead of having to choose which genre to invest your time and money in (like our forefathers), we can just listen to anything. Artists like this will reflect the idea in their art. Halsey does every style under the sun (and just wait for the NIN stylings of her subsequent album), and yet it all sounds like Halsey. Overall, I enjoy when pop artists present a buffet of genres, rather than stick to one per album, only to shift in between as needed.

— What's changed recently regarding my idea of Halsey? Unfortunately, I now listen to Halsey and think of their star turn as a sexualized cartoon wolf in Sing 2.

— I don't think this is an interesting idea to anyone besides me, so I've refrained from writing about it too often—music can be tied to a specific place geographically, depending on where you first heard it. I.e., when you hear a song, you think of the exact place in which you first heard it. It's not something that I ever think about when I'm not listening to music or to specific songs or albums. But when I do hear a song, I know it because the image of that geographical location appears in my mind as vividly as it appeared in my eyesight on that day. I hear "3 AM" and can picture the exact Philadelphia block that I was on while listening to this thing. I won't name the street on the blog, since I was in a work vehicle at the time, but still. It's weird how strongly your brain chemicals are able to tie certain tunes to a sense of place.

— Alright, I've been doing RC@5 for a full year. I don't know if anyone reads my thoughts in this space, or cares. I think it's a worthy endeavor to revisit the music on a weekly basis, but I am starting to question how much this writing exercise is needed on top of that. I'll keep going for a few more weeks, but if the cupboards of the mind start to feel empty and dry, I might switch over to placing my thoughts into the discussion board comments. I'd save like 20 minutes each week spent in Microsoft Paint alone!!!