Halsey

Ashley Nicolette Frangipane, known as Halsey, is an American singer, songwriter, actress and activist. She started writing songs at 17, in 2014 she signed a contract with the Astralwerks record company and released a five-track mini-album called Room 93. Her debut studio album Badlands was released in 2015.

Ashley was born on September 29, 1994 in the small town called Edison, New Jersey. Her parents, Nicole and Chris Frangipane, dropped out of college after her mother found out about her pregnancy. Halsey's mother now works as an emergency medical technician, her father manages a car dealership. Her mother is of Italian and Hungarian descent, whereas her father is mostly African-American with some distant Irish ancestry. Ashley has two younger brothers named Sevian and Dante. She has been playing the violin, viola, and cello since her youth, as well as the guitar, since the age of 14. Halsey grew up listening to Alanis Morissette, Justin Bieber, and Brand New. Throughout her childhood, her family often moved due to the fact that her parents often changed their jobs.

In high school, she was often bullied by other students. In one of the first interviews, she admitted that at the age of 17 she was diagnosed with bipolar affective disorder after an unsuccessful suicide attempt, led to her being hospitalized for nearly three weeks. Her mother was diagnosed this disorder too. After that she began using drugs, saying her bipolar disorder caused her to become an "unconventional child". Also at 17 Ashley was in relations with 24 years old man, who lived on Halsey Street in Brooklyn, New York, from where she took her pseudonym. She said, "That's where I first started writing music and where I started to feel like I was a part of something bigger than my town in middle of New Jersey. Halsey is like a manifestation of all the overstated part of me, so it's like an alter ego." She graduated from Warren Hills Regional High School in 2012.

After her graduation Ashley entered in the Rhode Island School of Design, but she left it due to financial problems and instead entered community college. However, she left it too and was kicked out from home by her parents. She commented this, "They just don't agree with a lot of things about me". Later Ashley lived in a basement in lower Manhattan with a group of "degenerate stoners" she knew through her ex-boyfriend. When she wasn't living there, she often lived in one of New York's many homeless shelters, and she considered prostitution as a way to earn money. Describing this period of her life, Halsey said, "I remember one time I had $9 in my bank account, and bought a four-pack of Red Bull and used it to stay up overnight over the course of two or three days, because it was less dangerous to not sleep than it was to sleep somewhere random and maybe get raped or kidnapped." Also she used to stay with her maternal grandmother during this time.

Halsey started writing music when she was 17, and in 2012, she began posting videos to social media such as YouTube and Kik, and in particular Tumblr, under the username se7enteenblack.