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Photo: Luke Hannaford
"In real life, you wouldn’t want to be my friend," Halsey – flanked by scenes of Monument Valley-style desert roads and a shimmering map of the galaxy – is gazing out into the packed Brixton crowd. "Because a lot of you are too fucking cool for me."
The self-deprecating shtick is a little hard to get on board with – given that Halsey is, in fact, unequivocally, intimidatingly cool – but the sentiment beneath it is a sincere one. Because Halsey, with her cropped hair, unfiltered opinions and laid-back attitude towards her own gender and sexuality, is a special kind of popstar. One whose mere existence is, to many young people, who see themselves as something of a misfit, a hugely comforting thing.
Halsey, in fact, might just be the most famous popstar you’ve never heard of. You’d never know, given the volume and exuberance with which the crowd are singing along tonight, that she’s never had a hit single. Her biggest chart success in the UK is ‘New Americana’, which reached No.184, and you could quite easily have never heard her songs played on the radio, on a television advert, or piped through tinny speakers in New Look.
But, in the age of the internet, chart success is no measure of success. Halsey’s ascent to superstardom has been a quiet one, bubbling conspiratorially underneath the mainstream, gaining traction on Tumblr and Twitter through word of mouth.
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Tonight, she blasts through the tracks from her debut album, Badlands, with a breakneck ferocity. She crouches to the ground, throws her head back and forth and stands spread-eagled at the top of a diamond-shaped platform, surveying the kingdom – no, community - of which she has found herself the leader. The music is infectious and pulsing, its hooks so catchy even the handful of fair-weather fans are singing heartily along by the second chorus.
Halsey doesn’t need radio airplay, she doesn’t need chart success, and she definitely doesn’t need the approval of critics. It’s Halsey’s fans who got her here tonight, not industry buzz, and it’s her fans whose approval she’s fighting hard to maintain. "I will never get sick of you guys," she declares as she reaches the end of her set. The feeling is – undoubtedly – mutual.
