Halsey has a lot to say – on tracks like “You Asked For it,” her words tumble out in torrents that are both bleak and beautiful, like waves crashing on a Nordic cliff. Have you noticed? Tell me have you noticed?” is redolent of conversations with self that can only occur in a quiet bedroom in the wee hours of the morning. The meditative “Lilith,” with its insistent refrain of “I just fuck things up, if you noticed. Yes, Halsey dips into the industrial guru’s bag of tricks here and there – most notably on the brutal, broken “Easier Than Lying,” a spiritual descendent of The Downward Spiral – but he album is at its best, though, when things are at their most hushed. If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power got an initial burst of attention because of Halsey’s surprising decision to team with producer (and occasional co-writer Trent Reznor, who displays a welcome restraint when it comes to imposing his vision on this darkly personal collection.
Where most of her pop peers churn out steady streams of unabashedly uncut id, pleasure for its own sake, Halsey has steadily moved in the other direction – a trek that’s culminated in this alternately brooding and self-judgmental masterwork of pure super-ego. Halsey If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power (Capitol) That’s why it’s at the top of our list below, because if we are living in a time when Trent Reznor is gonna make it a habit of producing pop albums with multiplatinum artists, we are indeed living in remarkable times. The angst wasn’t reserved for strictly the naturally loud crowd either, as commercial pop continued to surprise and enthrall in the form of Olivia Rodrigo and Halsey, who took a cement brick to the glass ceiling by recruiting Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross to produce her incredible 3rd or 4th album If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power. Whether it was Iron Maiden achieving a late career high with their double-length samurai epic Senjutsu, Turnstile pinpointing the precise line of balance between Cave-In and The Cure on the brilliant “Glow On”, the anonymous dreamcore of The Armed’s second LP Ultrapop or the reinvention of Buffalo metalcore mavens Every Time I Die on their brilliant ninth LP Radical, creativity through aggression was cathartic way to survive this dumpster fire year.
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