The Singles Jukebox

Please, no one tell Halsey where Jukebox HQ is…

[Video]
[5.60]

Kayla Beardslee: Halsey does not have enough to say. Well, correction — it sounds like she doesn’t have enough to say. Maybe working with another songwriter or two (the only ones credited are her and producer Greg Kurstin) might have helped coax out some more vulnerable, detailed lines, but as-is this song is desperately lacking in material, both musical and lyrical. “I wanna start this out by saying/I’ve gotta get it off my chest”: as a well-known singer-songwriter, that’s your opening line? Egregious filler? The only lines with narrative value in the first verse are “Got no anger, got no malice/Just a little bit of regret,” and I don’t even believe them — this is an intensely petty song, and there is no pettiness without a bit of lingering anger. She then repeats “I’m gonna start this out by saying” in the (very short) second verse: the song has started, Halsey, and you’re clearly treading water to make it to the chorus. Even the bridge, typically the best point to add new meaning to a song, is wordless. “You Should Be Sad” is just a prechorus and chorus, and as for the actual material in those parts, well, it’s okay. Halsey tries to characterize the guy as selfish and cold through admittedly catchy abstractions (“you’re not half the man you think that you are”) and tropes (“money, girls, and cars”), but her focus on all the things she tried to do for him, rather than his specific transgressions — like cheating, which is never mentioned in the song — makes “Sad” feel more like gratuitous punching down. And Halsey can do pissed-off: “3AM” is a highlight from Manic, and I’ve learned to love “Nightmare.” The problem with the lyrical pettiness here is that it’s supported by an underwhelming chorus and a guitar riff so limp it needs medication. I have a lot of respect for Greg Kurstin as a synthpop producer, but between this and the loud-but-flat “GIRL,” I have little faith in his work with country. Halsey cited “Before He Cheats” as an inspiration for the “Sad” music video, but can you imagine Carrie Underwood singing about keying her ex’s car over a track this empty? Angry, loud Halsey and completely stripped, confessional Halsey convince because those versions of her feel raw and believable and don’t rely on nuance. When she dials it back to this awkward midpoint on “You Should Be Sad,” the finesse just isn’t there.
[4]

Nortey Dowuona: Halsey has slowly become a better artist over the last few years she’s been on top, and this sandcastle of shape-shifting acoustic guitar and windy soft pedal vocals, with lurching, loping drums pulling the mix ahead, stands as tribute to that — not just that it fits Halsey’s shimmering croon, it also swirls blunt observations (“I tried to help you, it just made you maaadd”) and pointed ones (“I’m so glad that I never had a baby with you, cause you can’t love something unless there’s something in it for you”) into a rising glass tower, studded with river stones.
[7]

Tim de Reuse: Deconstructed 21st-century country, riding entirely on the strain of Halsey’s overproduced vocal harmonies. There’s something in the directness of “I’m so glad I never ever had a baby with you,” but between the bombastic swells of strings and effects and her every-syllable-deserves-emphasis delivery, none of it has any room to breathe.
[4]

Brad Shoup: It’s country the way Avicii pictured it, with one major innovation: those sheets of guitar, shaking with rage. Country tends to mask its rage as sorrow, but here Halsey and Kurstin give the arrangement as much punch as the line “I’m so glad I never ever had a baby with you.”
[6]

Alex Clifton: “I’m so glad I never ever had a baby with you/cos you can’t love nothing unless there’s something in it for you” is such a beautifully vindictive line, up there with “I hope you meet someone your height/so you can see eye to eye/with someone as small as you.” “You Should Be Sad” is by far one of the more surprising and successful sonic experiments on Halsey’s third album, feeling simultaneously understated like a good country song and anthemic like a Sia number. Manic is the closest I’ve ever come to understanding the appeal of Halsey, in part because she’s not hiding under layers of storytelling and persona — this is far more raw emotionally than she’s written previously, and I’d argue it’s more daring than creating an elaborate Romeo and Juliet album-long retelling. I’ve not been one for persona!Halsey, but if this is the music she releases from now on, I’ll gladly become a fan.
[8]

Isabel Cole: There’s an interesting tension between the music’s gentle, mournful prettiness and the ugliness of the story depicted, a tension echoed in the lyrics: the way she announces she harbors no anger nor malice before tearing into a devastating takedown. (That line about the baby is deliciously spiteful.) Halsey’s performance also embodies this split, sometimes crooning efficiently alongside the melody’s delicate turns, sometimes snarling with such spite you can almost see the spit; the creak in her voice sounds by turns sweet and bitter. 
[7]

Michael Hong: Perhaps there’s no song quite as affecting on Manic as “More,” a lament to the child Halsey never had and to the one she hopes to have one day. Then, retrospectively, “I’m so glad I never ever had a baby with you” becomes all the more scathing, especially from a woman who once told Rolling Stone, “I want to be a mom more than I want to be a pop star.” The rest of the track doesn’t cut anywhere as deep as that line, sounding petty and lost rather than biting. Halsey’s jump from alternative to pop to country makes “You Should Be Sad” sound like a lost A Star is Born-cut and equally as performative.
[5]

Thomas Inskeep: Does the acoustic guitar indicate that this is her Lady Gaga-circa-Joanne bid for “serious artist” cred? I appreciate the nastiness of this, at least, and that brief little explosive note that leads off each chorus.
[5]

Ryo Miyauchi: Words say one thing over laid-back faux-country, but Halsey’s performance suggests the very opposite, and “You Should Be Sad” sounds like a bomb waiting to go off because of it. Staying with generalities feels like a favor to not rock the waters, and the rare moment she does lay out the specifics, it sounds aggressively personal.
[6]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: So boring, emotionless, and bland, it’s hardly worth finding specific traits to complain about.
[2]

Alfred Soto: With Greg Kurstin digging the hook into listeners’ necks, it’s impossible to dismiss the craft of “You Should Be Sad,” nor would I want to. Halsey, like so many predecessors male and female, revels in her malice as if she had to endure the terrible relationship for the sake of writing well about its demise. Her best single since “Strangers.”
[7]

Vikram Joseph: Whenever I hear Halsey I just think of the time when someone quote-replied to a tweet (from a Lana stan account, naturally) saying “Without Lana there would be no Halsey, Melanie Martinez, Billie Eilish or Lorde” with “You mean to say we could have avoided Halsey?” Cruel, but more memorable than a Halsey song.
[4]

Micha Cavaseno: At some point last year, some net teen in my feed called Maren Morris “an even worse Halsey” and I proceeded to kiss my teeth and remind myself that as I’ve grown up, cyberbullying brats off the timeline is unbecoming to my zen lifestyle. Nevertheless, there is some unintentional synergy here given that Morris’s frequent collaborator in Greg Kurstin helps make the lesser of two evils to that random geek hit the nail on the head. “You Should Be Sad” is maybe one of my least favorite of the singles off Manic thus far; it does the most light-hefting lyrically and the vocal performances feel the most stitched together. It ends up reminding me of Post Malone’s “Broken Whiskey Glass,” where you have Hex-era Earth-style doom spaghetti western guitar screaming raw power at you while the subject is more interested in conveying indignation and contempt than a emotion that suits the tension it hopes to convey. Thankfully there’s other and better Halsey singles that do this without trying to get all Red Dead Redemption on you.
[6]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: Halsey’s voice has a tone well-suited for this balance between verge-of-tears introspection and fist-clenched perseverance. The songwriting and production bolster her pain and redemption in equal measure: the steady, mid-tempo beat grounds her emotions so the screeching guitars can simultaneously vindicate, provide solace, express rage. You can register all those feelings in Halsey’s delivery of the titular line, and you can sense how strong she is underneath the composure.
[7]

Katherine St Asaph: It’s a nice enough acoustic take on the melody of “Let’s Talk About Sex.” I hope that’s conciliatory enough to not get accidentally wished 9/11 upon again.
[6]