Halsey opened up about how her duet with Fifth Harmony’s Lauren Jauregui is a LGBTQ love song

With the followup to her 2015 album Badlands just a few weeks away, Halsey has spoken about recording an LGBTQ love song with Fifth Harmony’s Lauren Jauregui for her second album, hopeless fountain kingdom, and it actually sounds super sweet.

Sitting down with Zach Sang for an interview to promote the collection, including its lead single “Now or Never,” Halsey opened up about her collab with Lauren, which is titled “Strangers,” is a same-sex love song.

“I was thinking to myself, if I want this song to be believable, it needs to be real,” the singer said. “I’m not going to put a girl on the song to sing who’s straight. I’m just not going to do it.” 

Continuing, she shared details of the collaboration, including how perfectly their vocals were matched, noting that “[Lauren’s voice] is, like, really powerful and big and raspy, and mine is kind of like light and raspy. But it’s really cool.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9jNSwmEQ3s?feature=oembed

"I just love that Lauren and I are two women who have a mainstream pop presence doing a love song for the LGBT community, Halsey continued. “It’s unheard of. It’s very rare to see it from a female perspective.

Going on to say that she was was inspired by the likes of Troye Sivan, who is a friend of hers, and Sam Smith, the singer said she wanted to replicate their honesty and frankness when it comes to the LGBTQ experience.

“There’s not one point in ‘Strangers’ where I’m like, ‘We’re girls and we’re singing, and you should accept us.’ It’s not about that. It’s just a love song,” she said. “At no point in the song does it make a point to say that it’s a gay love song. It’s just a love song that happens to use same-sex pronouns.”

Halsey talking about a song from her album, 'Strangers' with Lauren Jauregui. https://t.co/vHbk9Y7kJK

— Pop Crave (@PopCrave) May 17, 2017

It’s so refreshing to see an artist like Halsey writing music that truly represents people’s experiences. As she said, it’s pretty unheard of to hear a straight-up love song that just happens to use same-sex pronouns, especially from the perspective of women, so we’re super excited to hear the song when it comes out.

Luckily, we don’t have too long to wait until we can hear it. Halsey releases her new album, hopeless fountain kingdom, on June 2nd!