Halsey on coping via Britney Spears and her unusual hobby: “I just got so obsessed with it”Halsey on coping via Britney Spears and her unusual hobby: “I just got so obsessed with it”

Sarah Pardini

In the new issue of PAPER magazine, Halsey reveals that during the time she was out of the spotlight dealing with her illness, she distracted herself with an unusual hobby: doll housing.

“It was something I could do inside, and it was something I could do that was creative, and it was something quiet that I could do when my son was asleep,” she explains, adding that manipulating tiny furniture helped her fine motor skills, which were suffering.

“I just got so obsessed with it. I started building furniture from scratch, and then making my own wallpaper,” she reveals. But there was another reason why she enjoyed it.

“I just felt really f****** ugly the whole time I was sick. I could not look at myself. I didn’t look in a mirror, unless I was putting a contact lens in my eye, for months,” she reveals. “I was just unrecognizable. I didn’t like looking at myself. It was horrific, and it would spin me out, and just sitting there and playing with these beautiful tiny things was so much nicer.”

Halsey also tells PAPER that she interpolated Britney Spears‘ “Lucky” in her song of the same name because, “I have this weird coping mechanism where, if I’m not dealing with something internally, I’ll catch myself singing a song that relates to it.”

After facetiously singing the song to herself while undergoing treatment, she decided to interpolate it, noting “parallels” between how she was being seen at that time and what Britney went through years ago.

“I was like, yo, babe … whatever I’m going through, she’s been through, I better toughen up a little. You know what I mean? It just gave me perspective.”

Halsey’s new song “Ego,” from her upcoming album, The Great Impersonator, is out now.

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