Artist Study

As Halsey is our artist of choice, I have decided to analyse her three latest Music videos:

- Now Or Never

- Bad At Love

- Castle

My reasoning for creating an artist study on Halsey was to get a better idea of her video style and seeing her as a text.

Now Or Never

Now or Never is Halsey's first music video for her first single from her latest album Hopeless Fountain Kingdom. She has continued her theme of a dystopian twist on her video; instead of being a dystopian ruined world, she has added it to the well known story of Romeo and Juliet. It's a narrative video that presents a forbidden love between two rival gang members. There is a difference between the studio version of the song, instead it includes the storyline which will be underlying in all her videos from Hopeless Fountain Kingdom, an extra thirty seconds or so on either end of the song is part of the story of the forbidden romance. It also has extra dialogue over particular parts of the song, mostly yelling and arguing between characters. It's one of my favourite videos by Halsey as the song was one of Halsey's most popular songs in her career. I like how it continues her dystopian theme from her last album Badlands but instead goes down a romantic path, making it different from Badlands.

Bad At Love

Bad at Love is Halsey's second video from Hopeless Fountain Kingdom, continuing on from Now or Never after she ran away in the final seconds of the video. This continues her life on the run from the opposing gangs. The video kind of fits with the lyrics but there's no clear cut romance as there is in the lyrics. She did however release a second version of the video called Bad At Love (Angelus Cut) indicating that it's the version to fit in with her other video Now or Never. The normal version has no extra dialogue or moments that is different from the studio song of Bad at Love. It's not my favourite video of Halsey's as it seems a bit out of place from the rest of her music videos, however I like that she wanted to keep her Romeo and Juliet story going through her videos and released the angelus cut; Hopeless Fountain Kingdom is entirely the love story so it makes sense for her videos to match the vibe of her album.

Castle

Castle was Halsey's song that became the title song of the film The Huntsman: Winter's war. She released two versions of the song; one album version and the other the film version, the difference being the album cut is longer. The video however is shorter than both songs, being a promotion for the film. The video itself is a mixture of Halsey singing the song and parts of the film being shown, as is done for film songs. It also has overlapping dialogue from the film at certain points, making it different from the recorded versions. It's shorter than the studio recordings as it just focuses on the majority of the lyrics to compliment the film footage. I haven't really watched this video much because personally it shows too much film and not enough Halsey but it's still a good way of advertising the film.