Halsey – Ghost
“A husk like the title.”
[Video][Website]
[4.67]
Katherine St Asaph: “Syncbait,” like its media-buzzword counterparts “thinkpiece” and “take,” is one of those conveniently vague pejoratives: so meaningless it’s versatile, especially to writers looking to dismiss artists they viscerally, inexplicably don’t like — primarily new artists actually in danger of being sunk by it. Yet most critics agree that it exists. So while it’s easy to be needlessly cynical about “Ghost” and say it exists solely to soundtrack a Girls episode (and — indulge me — I’m sure someone involved rejoiced when they learned Halsey was a stop on the L train), let’s specify why. It satisfies all the artist-comparison checkmarks, the kind you’d see in industry listings: Drake cadences, Ellie-like vocal splaying, Lana-like melodrama, sad-eyed sad boys in courtyards, title from an Ella Henderson song, the personality of everyone and no one. It hints at real pain – searching for some whatever, ambivalently crushes, boys losing their souls — but never gets too specific, harsh or coherent. It’s easy to like, even possible to love given outside context, but on its own a husk like the title.
[5]
Iain Mew: I love the thick swirl of sound around the chorus, the way that it matches Halsey’s vocals for strength and isolation. The combination reminds me of Indiana in how it evokes despair with its own comfort mechanism built in. The contrast to the pep of the rest of the song seemed a bit weird at first, but there’s enough in the narrative to suggest that’s the point.
[7]
Josh Winters: Exactly characteristic of its titular figure: spellbinding when you interact with it, ephemeral in nature, and faceless amid its counterparts.
[5]
Alfred Soto: The guitar crunch is a necessary spoiler in a production dominated by space and synths and a voice in love with its coyness.
[5]
Thomas Inskeep: Sounds like a what a clueless label executive would think Sky Ferreira sounds like, only more, y’know, “marketable.”
[3]
Brad Shoup: I love that azlyrics.com capitalized it so that it’s “You’re a Rolling Stone boy”. Anachronism aside, this is a slog: listing organ and arbitrarily applied kick drum. Halsey spits bars like Tove Lo without the painstaking focus; a lot of lines end in “boy” but the penultimate syllable is never “fuck”. This plays like the tranciest pop-punk song ever.
[3]
They played this on Hits-1 early last year trying to sell Halsey as the American Lorde. I’m kind of surprised how all of the other artist comparisons mentioned fit so well too. I’ll give it this, even though it’s benefitting from trends, it doesn’t sound weighed down by them.