Review: I was warned about Halsey’s concert. Here’s what I learned from watching it.
There were a couple of warning signs flashing at me ahead of Halsey’s concert at PNC Music Pavilion on Friday night.
One was clear and straightforward, appearing on large video monitors next to the stage several times as the crowd waited for the start of the set, and again on a gigantic screen leaning over the rear of the stage right after the lights went down: “The following performance contains mature themes that may be sensitive for some individuals and visual images that may not be appropriate for all audiences.”
The other, meanwhile, had come much further in advance, and was more cryptic: A week and a half before the 27-year-old pop star’s Charlotte show, the public relations team handling press for “The Love and Power Tour” reached out to say it was rescinding invitations to the performance that had been sent out to journalists in April.
Of course, all that really means is that tickets weren’t going to be given to reviewers for free. It does not preclude me from paying for my own seat — which is what I did.
I did this partly because I hoped to figure out if there was something in particular that Halsey was trying to keep from critics; but I did it mainly because, after being impressed with Halsey’s last show here, at Spectrum Center in 2017, I wanted to see what she could do with some additional seasoning as a headliner and with another two full studio albums under her belt.
(By the way, a quick note that I’ll be using Halsey’s preferred pronouns of she/her and they/them interchangeably throughout this write-up. They’ve taken offense before when publications have only used she/her, so I want to be sensitive to that.)
And I have to say that while their new show wasn’t discernibly better or worse than the one they staged here five years ago — their vocals were just as powerful, their vibe had the same natural coolness, their visuals were equally daring — there was a key noticeable difference.
It was absolutely, positively, eardrum-destroyingly LOUDER.
Before she even made her first appearance of the night on stage, Halsey’s fans already seemed to be screaming at max volume. And after a bunch of buildup, when they finally got their first glimpse — of the singer crouched on a catwalk more than 25 feet up, back-lit by spotlights, partially shrouded in smoke, singing the first verse of new cut “The Tradition” backed solely by Bonnie McIntosh-Ravey’s electric piano — they somehow found an extra, even higher gear in their lungs.
In fact, over and over and over and over again on Friday evening — throughout a set that sprawled across nearly two hours and featured some of Halsey’s biggest hits as well as the majority of the songs from their new album, “If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power” — fans at PNC filled the air in north Charlotte with a cacophony of deafening screams of the type usually associated with a Justin Bieber or a Jonas Brothers show.
There were a million ear-splitting moments. Here are a few that’ll stick with me:
- Just over half an hour into her set, after Halsey performed electropoppy 2016 single “Colors,” they playfully pointed out that they were feeling pressure “to make an impression on you that will hopefully last the rest of your life.” “I’m gonna try not to think about it,” they said, probably half-jokingly. “Everything’s fine. ... On stage in front of like 10,000 people in Charlotte, North Carolina.” Attendance actually was more like 20,000, which is PNC’s capacity. But the crowd’s response to her saying that involved SO MUCH FREAKING SHRIEKING that it sounded, seriously, like 40,000. In any event, a far cry — both literally and figuratively — from the fraction of that at the arena in 2017, when the upper level was curtained off because of slow ticket sales.
- Almost 90 minutes in, after crushing her self-deprecating mega-hit “Bad at Love,” Halsey joked about how the themes of her songs about relationships can swerve wildly, from being optimistic about love in one to being totally down and out on it in another. “That’s kind of the nature of the music, right? Is that, like, one second I’m like —” she then proceeded to illustrate how she sometimes even does that within the same song, by singing — a cappella — the chorus of “Clementine” from 2020 album “Manic”: “I don’t need anyone, I don’t need anyone / I just need everyone and then some / I don’t need anyone, I don’t need anyone / I just need everyone and then some...” The crowd joined her starting with the second line, and after the final line, fans took their lungs BACK UP TO 11.
- With just four songs to go, after having not waded into politics at all to that point, Halsey turned alt-rock banger “Nightmare” into a rallying cry as black-and-white clips of women marching at reproductive-rights protests earlier this month played behind them. Toward the end, a series of statistics about abortion flashed up on the screen — “Nearly 8 in 10 women oppose overturning Roe v. Wade,” “In Oklahoma and Texas, abortion is banned at six weeks,” “Six out of every 10 women who have abortions are already mothers.” The crowd went so OUT OF THEIR MINDS I had to plug my ears for a few seconds to find some relief.
- Right after that, she took a risk by trotting out “Experiment On Me,” a metal-core track from the “Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)“ soundtrack that marks a sharp sonic departure from her typical sound and is a song even her biggest fans probably don’t listen to often. Upon finishing, she told the crowd: “Playing that song is usually like my version of doing something weird on a date to see if they get another date, right? And not only do you guys get another date, but I’m coming home with you tonight.” IT WAS THE LOUDEST THE CROWD GOT ALL NIGHT. I uncovered my ears in time to hear her say, “I’ll prove it” — and she did so a few minutes later by letting people in the pit hold her up as she sang the final chorus of the penultimate song, “Without Me,” amid an explosion of confetti that rained down from the rafters.
Yes, the show did have a few of the traditional big-budget-pop-show trappings. Not just the confetti, but also pyro in the form of fireballs pluming out from the sides of the stage and sparks showering down from the tops of it.
On the other hand, Halsey dispensed this time with the female backup dancer that they bumped and grinded with (and kissed) during the last tour they brought here. They also didn’t mess with costume changes; they spent the whole night wearing a white tank top decorated with a giant red mouth — kind of like the Rolling Stones’ logo but without the tongue sticking out — and black military-style pants, their long blonde hair pinned back and blown out.
As for the visual images we were warned about, well, they certainly were varying degrees of disturbing.
During “Easier Than Lying,” we got several enormous close-ups of a human eye being propped open by eye clamps. During “1121,” there were an array of clips featuring a nude Halsey appearing to scream and writhe in some sort of agony behind a wet and foggy wall of glass. Wedged between “Hurricane” and “Lilith” was a video of her standing in front of a mirror, smashing her face into a sink to get her nose bleeding, then doing it hard enough a second time to knock a tooth out.
“Gasoline” was accompanied by images of her pulling a fingernail off, “Experiment On Me” by close-up shots of razor blades being chewed on by bloodied mouths.
It’s art, I guess ... though I prefer the type they pulled off during their cover of “Be Kind,” their 2020 collaboration with Marshmello.
Incorporating what has become a hallmark of her live performances, Halsey sang the EDM-flavored hit while standing at an easel and using paint markers to create a doodle on a giant canvas, in this case of a group of faces and eyes and lips.
She’s no Picasso, but for some reason that trick not only never gets tiresome, but it’s pretty darn captivating — and she knows it.
“That’s my favorite part of every show,” Halsey said after she finished, while fans (as you probably could have guessed) screamed their heads off. “The cool thing about it is every single night I draw something different, right? So every single night, whatever I put on that canvas is a reflection of a moment that you and I are sharing together right now that we’re never gonna re-create and are never gonna feel again.” (More screaming.)
“You guys deserve so much more than that. I wish I could give you more than that, than some (expletive) lines on a canvas, or words in these songs. I would give you absolutely everything I had if I could. I would give you the shirt off of my (expletive) back.”
As I covered my ears again, it suddenly dawned on me why Halsey’s tour didn’t want journalists in seats at these shows.
Or, at least, I formed some semblance of an opinion. That’s what this is, by the way — a theory — and although I may believe it has credence, on the record I need to make it clear that I have no proof of this. This theory is for entertainment purposes only. :)
Anyway, here it is:
Halsey doesn’t trust journalists. In fact, they announced last summer that they won’t do interviews anymore. This spring, the press team handling their tour went to work as normal, inviting reviewers. Then, when the topic came up, Halsey herself made the call on rescinding the invitations — although not so much as a result of her distaste for the media but rather because she loves her fans more than anything, and wanted every single seat to go to one.
If my guess were to actually turn out to be accurate, I would respect them for that.
But I would also want them to know this: The seat I sat in on Friday night indeed was filled by a fan.
Halsey’s setlist
1. “The Tradition”
2. “Castle”
3. “Easier Than Lying”
4. “You Should Be Sad”
5. “1121” / “Die for Me”
6. “Graveyard”
7. “Colors”
8. “Hurricane”
9. “Lilith”
10. “The Lighthouse”
11. “Killing Boys”
12. “Girl Is a Gun”
13. “Be Kind”
14. “More”
15. “Darling”
16. “Honey”
17. “3am”
18. “Bad at Love”
19. “Whispers”
20. “Gasoline”
21. “Nightmare”
22. “Experiment On Me”
23. “Without Me”
24. “I Am Not a Woman, I’m a God”
This story was originally published May 28, 2022 at 1:30 PM.
