Halsey Can’t Escape Her Past In Haunting New Song

Getting over someone isn’t easy, but getting under someone else isn’t always the answer, as Halsey finds out in her new song. “Eyes Closed” is the third track off her upcoming sophomore album, Hopeless Fountain Kingdom, due out June 2. On Thursday (May 4), Beats 1 premiered the song along with a juicy interview about the relationship behind it.

“Now if I keep my eyes closed he looks just like you / But he’ll never stay, they never do,” Halsey croons in the chorus. The LP was inspired by a “prolonged, toxic” breakup, she told host Zane Lowe.

Romeo and Juliet symbolism is sprinkled across every aspect of Hopeless Fountain Kingdom, especially its lead single, “Now Or Never.” Why?

“I was so obsessed with [Baz Luhrmann’s] Romeo + Juliet and I didn’t make the correlation [that] I loved the film because of what was happening in my real life,” Halsey explained to Lowe and Luhrmann, who directed the 1996 film starring Leonardo DiCaprio, in the clip below.

“One day as I was getting to the rising action of the record — the moment where I’m realizing the love is doomed, this like forsaken kind of thing — I realized that that’s why I was so obsessed with the [movie]. Because I felt like I was living it,” she said. Here’s a full breakdown of her obsession with Shakespeare’s tragic romance.