After channeling Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Nicks, late Cranberries singer Dolores O’Riordan, Evanescence’s Amy Lee, David Bowie, Cher and other iconic stars as part of her countdown to upcoming album The Great Impersonator (Oct. 25), Halsey tapped into one of their biggest childhood influences on Thursday (Oct. 17).
To preview the 16th track on the album, the Spears-sampling “Lucky,” Halsey, 30, morphed into In the Zone-era Britney Spears, posting an image of herself with wind-tousled, blonde-streaked hair standing in a blue void while staring intently at the camera with a steely look.
“It’s Britney, b–ch!!!,” Halsey wrote of the eleventh preview of her fifth studio album. “The first superstar who ever inspired me,” they wrote of Spears. “There were infinite Britney looks to choose from, but I had to do this iconic album!,” they added of Spears’ 2003 fourth studio album, which featured the Madonna collab “Me Against the Music,” as well as the Billboard Hot 100 No. 9 hit “Toxic.” The accompanying image comes as Halsey promised to be “impersonating a different icon every day and teasing a snippet of the song they inspired.”
So far that’s meant the gauzy pop tune “Panic Attack” in honor of Nicks, the twangy Parton homage “Hometown,” as well as the Harvey take on turbulent rocker “Dog Years” and tips to the enigmatic British pop star Bush on the chilly “I Never Loved You,” Cher with the aching “Letter to God (1974),” rock chameleon Bowie on the spooky “Darwinism” and Lee on the churning “Lonely Is the Muse.”
The pitch perfect look/sound experiment continued earlier this week with Halsey sporting a short copper-toned hairstyle for the O’Riordan rager “Ego,” rolling up their sleeves, picking up a guitar and posing in front of an American flag for the confessional “Letter to God” as The Boss and going acoustic for the lo-fi Linda Rondstadt tribute “I Believe in Magic.”
On Thursday, the Grammy-nominated singer booked an intimate Nov. 21 show at the 1,400-capacity Regency Ballroom in San Francisco; the show is a exclusively for Wells Fargo Autograph Credit cardholders.
See Halsey’s Britney Spears-inspired look below.
