To be able to take in the scattered charms Hopeless Fountain Kingdom has to offer, you have to make yourself get past the truly laughable opener, “The Prologue”, where Halsey recites the prologue of Romeo and Juliet, followed by a highly distorted bit that Imogen Heap did better in “Hide and Seek”. For example, at least three songs on Hopeless Fountain Kingdom reference missed phone calls in the context of a romantic relationship, which is probably something that every cliched breakup song ever written mentions as well. While the verses do scan a bit better on Hopeless Fountain Kingdom than on her prior releases, it’s just not worth the trade-off. Her lyrics on her 2014 EP Room 93 were in the same vein, with the overall music/lyrics combination of “Is There Somewhere” nearly literally knocking my socks off. On the whole, the narrative quality of Halsey’s Badlands lyrics, while at times awkwardly phrased, were what made those songs so memorable. Alas, it is not so and knowing anything about Halsey’s concept for this album does nothing to enrich the overall listening experience, meaning that it could well have been scrapped. The fact that Hopeless Fountain Kingdom is meant to be a dystopian concept album about a Romeo-and-Juliet type of romance would lead to one thinking that more, rather than less, specificity and detail would serve the story. We’ve gone from the specific, honest (and thus more memorable) lines like “Do you remember the taste of my lips that night / I stole a bit of my mother’s perfume? Cause I remember when my father put his fist through the wall / that separated the dining room” (“Roman Holiday”) to the utterly generic “I don’t wanna fight right now / Know you always right, now / Know I need you ’round with me / But nobody waitin’ ’round with me” (“Now Or Never”). Where her Badlands lyrics had a consistent confessional quality, that same quality is intermittent at best on Hopeless Fountain Kingdom. Halsey has, for the most part, abandoned the specificity that was key to her lyrical successes on Badlands. It is with disappointment, then, that I have to report that Hopeless Fountain Kingdom, Halsey’s second full-length, represents a step backward regarding quality. If Taylor Swift is the so-called good girl of pop who knew you were trouble when you walked then, then Halsey, in contrast, would remind you that you knew she was trouble when she walked in - but you love every minute of it. Halsey’s lyrics often deal with drug use and sexuality in fairly frank, unapologetic fashion, creating the persona of a messy, raw young adult finding her way in the world.
Delivered in her husky, compelling voice, songs from Badlands like “Colors”, “Strange Love”, “Coming Down”, and “Roman Holiday” are just great songs, period. It was an incredibly strong debut from a young artist whose lyrics combined intimate, breezy poetry with bruised vulnerability. I quite enjoyed Halsey’s first album, Badlands, when it dropped in summer 2015.