Halsey Reveals The Unconventional Inspiration Behind 'BADLANDS' & Could There Be A Screenplay About It To Come?

We've already told you how Halsey plans to be the next big thing in 2016, but we caught up with her about what inspires her, and you might be surprised by her answers.

She began: "Being a musician people ask you a lot about what musicians inspire you, and there's plenty of musicians that I love and respect, but I think that I'm the most inspired by cinema."

You only have to look at Halsey's latest music video for her track 'New Americana' to see how she's been influenced by some of the biggest film directors and producers out there.

She cites just a few in her MTV Push interview, saying: "I love Quentin Tarantino, I love Harmony Korine, Larry Clarke."

The 21-year-old also explained the motivation behind her music, and this notion is simple: Halsey writes about people in a raw and real way.

She explained: "I love films that show people in a way that's so real it's almost unsettling, and that's what really inspires me, because I write about people. I write about people that I know, so I want to portray them and portray myself in a way that is unapologetic." 

Her debut album BADLANDS was heavily influenced by the likes of the Tarantino classic, Pulp Fiction.

Halsey revealed how her approach to making music is very similar to how film producers approach scores, saying: "The idea of these films that show people in a way that's sort of violent but sad. In Tarantino's films in particular the scores are always very, very cinematic but also very dark and very epic."

She added: "That's how I wanted BADLANDS to feel and we approached it the way you would approach a movie score. […] So initially in building the songs we put real life sounds in them and that's a film tactic, that's what people do in movie scores, adding extra sounds to further what is happening in those movies."

When asked if she'd ever consider writing a screenplay for her debut album, Halsey admitted loving the idea, but she doesn't reckon she has the patience, she said: "I would love to write a screenplay for BADLANDS one day, I don't think I could ever have the patience to do it, I don't even have the patience to write songs, I write some of the shortest songs ever because I don't have the patience. But if I ever wrote a screenplay for BADLANDS it would be a no brainer."

Until then, we can look forward to Halsey unleashing her creativity in the form of music videos, she continues: "There's still a lot of music videos to be made for the album so I'm lucky I'll get to flex that creative muscle a little bit more."

- By Megan Downing

17 Things Any Halsey Fan Should Know

• Halsey is an anagram of her first name Ashley. Her full name is Ashley Nicolette Frangipane.

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• Her album BADLANDS debuted on the Billboard chart at No.2

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• Record bosses started taking note when her track 'Ghost' started picking up traction on Soundcloud

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• She's a Directioner. So much so in 2012 she went on to write...

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• ..a parody of Taylor Swift's 'I Knew You Were Trouble', 'The Haylor Song', which went viral

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• Her birthday is the 29th September

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• Halsey features on Justin Bieber's 'Purpose' album track 'The Feeling' and it's awesome

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• Halsey identifies as bisexual...

  Halsey/Instagram

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• ...but in an interview with NME she said: "I am desperate to be indefinable.”

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• She's a hair goddess - from blue or pink to short or long we have serious follicle envy right now

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• During her first UK tour she offered to dye her fans' hair in London. Expecting only 100, nearly 600 turned up!

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• She was the most tweeted about artist at SXSW Festival 2015

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• She loves a tattoo

  Halsey/Instagram

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• She sold out Madison Square Garden in just three weeks

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• She's a huge fan of The 1975

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• ...and hangs out with 5SOS

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• Between her Instagram and Twitter alone she has over 2.7 million followers!

  Halsey/Instagram

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