Without Her

Halsey Says She Was Passed Over for Grammy Glory After Slamming President Neil Portnow's Sexism Remarks

In a new interview Halsey also speaks about suicide, miscarriage and the lack of camaraderie between female pop stars in the Post #MeToo era.

Pop star Halsey has said that she believes she was passed over for a Grammy nomination after she spoke out against former president Neil Portnow’s comments two years ago, when he said it was women’s responsibility to “step up” if they wanted to excel in the music industry.

“I had a lot to say about that, and I am nowhere to be seen on any of those acknowledgments,” she told the Guardian.

There was astonishment among fans and some in the wider music industry when Halsey, 24, was passed over for a nomination for her chart-topping track “Without Me.”

Halsey now says that she believes her exclusion was linked to her reaction to Portnow’s comments after he was asked a question about the lack of female artist representation in certain categories of the Grammy Awards.

He said, “I think it has to begin with women who have the creativity in their hearts and their souls who want to be musicians, who want to be engineers, who want to be producers, who want to be part of the industry on an executive level to step up.”

Halsey was among those who threw shade on the remarks, tweeting a series of comments: “I strongly back the disagreement with the way that the Academy approaches things but please remember the Grammy's are voted by a 'jury of peers' which means other artists and producers and writers select the nominees,” she said, before adding: “Neil's comment was absurd. Female artists came HARD in 2017. It’s a conversation about the standards of which the ENTIRE INDUSTRY expects women to uphold.”

She now has an album, Manic to promote, which has already generated the hit single, “You Should Be Sad.” Depending on where you work, the video below may not be safe for it, given its grungy swimwear orgy vibe.

In the interview, Halsey also says she’s felt used in many relationships, saying: “Here I am—impulsive, spontaneous, kind of damaged, meeting a guy, a girl, whoever, and they’d say: ‘I’ve never met anyone like you, I’m becoming a different person.’ I was scared to be bored, scared to be exhausted. This year, I put my foot down. I don’t care if everybody thinks I’m boring. I’m not gonna fucking kill myself.”

She says that her new song “More” is about her desire for a child, she has endometriosis and has suffered several miscarriages.  “It’s the most inadequate I’ve ever felt. Here I am achieving this out-of-control life, and I can’t do the one thing I’m biologically put on this earth to do,” she said. “Then I have to go onstage and be this sex symbol of femininity and empowerment? It is demoralizing.”

She says that her latest prognosis is positive, and motherhood is “looking like something that’s gonna happen for me. That’s a miracle.”

Halsey also says that she is disappointed by the lack of camaraderie between female pop stars in the post #MeToo era, saying: “Nobody wants to be my friend. They’re scared I’m gonna pop off about something. I’m drama by association. I put myself out there with my peers; I don’t know if people really ever wanted to do the same with me. So I stopped wasting my energy.”

Halsey also says that seven years ago, she tried to take her own life and still worries about her health. “There’s been a lot of times where I’ve thought: ‘If I keep doing this I’m gonna die.’ Other times I think: ‘But if I’m alive and I’m not doing this I might as well be dead.’ This is all I’ve known for the past five years. I hope the world gets more sensitive to that. I don’t think it will.”

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Tom SykesEuropean Editor at Large

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