ABC/Paula LoboHalsey is currently on the road on a Christmas tour with other artists, including The Chainsmokers, and at each date, they perform their #1 hit “Closer” together. But when Halsey is out on her own tour, she performs “Closer” on her own and, she says, it turns into a very different song. “It’s almost kinda heartbreaking,” she tells ABC Radio.
On her Hopeless Fountain Kingdom tour, which just wrapped up last month, Halsey says, “I wasn’t planning on doing ‘Closer.’ But then I started doing this really beautiful, stripped-down piano arrangement of the song. It was really about the lyrics, my voice and connecting with the crowd.”
“Looking into a room full of a couple thousand people all holding up their lights and singing, ‘We ain’t ever getting older’ — it gives the song a new perspective,” she tells ABC Radio.
According to Halsey, the hit version of “Closer” is “this fun summer song that I think a lot of people drove around [singing] with their friends in the car.” But, she says, “When you sing it in such an intimate way, it gives it this sense of nostalgia, almost like ‘Forever Young,’ y’know what I mean?”
“It’s almost kinda heartbreaking,” she adds. “‘Cause you look around the room at so many fans and familiar faces that have grown with you, and realize, ‘Well, we are getting older, but we’re doing it together.’ And that’s very special.”
Halsey’s Christmas tour dates wrap up this weekend. Meanwhile, she’s just released a new single, “Him & I,” with G-Eazy.
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