【搬运】【译】叉婊Pitchfork评Halsey 2020年专辑《Manic》

搬运自：微信公众号【评论搬一堆】（在原文基础上添加了英语原文与排版调整）

这张专辑的灵感源于她自己，Halsey的第三张专辑将把孤独的自我意识转变为一种力量，但是这张专辑的某些高光时刻却被流行音乐的单调所掩盖。

After decades of pop-culture hegemony, the gendered tropes around break-ups have finally been supplanted. Instead of tubs of ice cream and days spent wallowing on a couch, modern heartbreak is mitigated by the promise of a social media glow-up and encouraged by a culture obsessed with both wellness and politicizing the personal. A breakup is not the failure of a relationship, this contemporary approach preaches, but an opportunity for growth, no matter how uncomfortable. Or maybe it’s an expression of heteronormative hostility; men, we learn, are trash. Either way, pain can be a messy, divinely timed intervention from the universe. Manic, the third album by Halsey, is an unlikely, but effective, manifestation of this new convention. I can imagine many listeners finding comfort across its 16 songs, and similarly bridging angst and self-discovery to navigate personal crises of their own.

在流行文化统治了几十年之后，关于分手的性别化比喻终于被取代了。现代意义上的心碎不再是一桶又一桶的冰淇淋，也不再是整天坐在沙发上一动不动，社交媒体的兴起缓和了人们的这种痛苦，以及注重健康和个人政治化的文化氛围也支撑着心碎现代化现象。现在人们普遍认为分手并不意味着一段失败的关系，而是一个成长的机会，不管这有多么让人不爽。也可能是异性恋敌意的一种表达；我们知道的，男人都是大猪蹄子。不管怎么说，痛苦可能是来自宇宙的某种混乱、神圣的定时干预。虽说可能性不大，但Halsey的第三张专辑《Manic》却有效地体现了这种新的传统。我可以想象，许多听众在这16首歌中找到了一丝慰藉，并以类似的方式在焦虑和认识自我之间架起桥梁，以应对他们自己的个人危机。

A handful of Manic’s first six singles, among them the “Cry Me a River”-interpolating Billboard No. 1 “Without Me” and the country-pop manifesto “You Should Be Sad,” are rooted in the exploration of deep pain and what Halsey has described as an interest in “female rage.” That explains the lingering influence of artists once written off as angry women: Shania Twain, Alanis Morissette, and pre-acrobatics P!nk. (That more than a third of the album’s songs were released in its lead-up points to an altogether different convention: the pop album as a compilation of market-tested singles.) Notably, Halsey describes the album as the first project she has written as herself, New Jersey’s Ashley Frangipane, and not under the protective cover of her alter ego. Unlike 2017’s hopeless fountain kingdom and 2015’s BADLANDS, Manic is not structured around an elaborate fictional framework.

《Manic》的前六首先行单曲，包括了登顶Billboard排行榜第一名的采样了“Cry Me a River"的“Without Me”和乡村音乐宣言“You Should Be Sad”，它们都植根于对深层痛苦的探索，以及Halsey对“女性愤怒”的兴趣。这就解释了为什么那些曾经被描绘成愤怒女人的艺术家们依旧影响着我们，比如像Shania Twain、Alanis Morissette还有P!nk。(专辑中超过三分之一的歌曲都已经发行过了，它们都把矛头指向截然不同的传统：流行专辑是由符合大众口味的单曲组合而成的)值得注意的是，Halsey称这张专辑是她以自己的身份而创作的第一个作品，她是新泽西州的Ashley Frangipane，而不是在另一个自我的保护之下。与2017年的《hopeless fountain kingdom》和2015年的《BADLANDS》不同的是，《Manic》并没有建立在一个精心设计的虚构框架之上。

For Halsey, autobiography offers opportunity; her ability to translate the arc of her life—schoolyard misfit turned aspiring bohème turned Tumblr microcelebrity turned misunderstood pop star—is among the qualities upon which she has established her career. She does well in framing some of those personal experiences as concepts, on standout songs like the pop-rock drunk-texting anthem “3am” and the melodramatic revenge drama “killing boys,” both of which manage to flip lonely self-awareness into a kind of strength. On the former, a song that deserves a bright future as a karaoke classic, she begs: “My insecurities are hurtin’ me/Someone please come and flirt with me.” Who among us hasn’t been there?

对Halsey来说，她的自身经历为其提供了音乐机会。她有能力将自己的人生轨迹从校园里的不合群转变为有抱负的波希米亚人，从Tumblr上的小网红转变为不被人理解的流行明星，这些都是她奠定其音乐生涯的一部分品质。她擅长将一些个人经历当作歌曲的灵感，比如流行摇滚的酒后短信圣歌“3am”和情节夸张的复仇剧“killing boys”，这两首歌都成功地将孤独的自我意识转化为力量。在“3am”中，她唱道：“My insecurities are hurtin’ me/Someone please come and flirt with me.（我的不安全伤害了我/快来个人来和我打情骂俏吧。）”我们谁又没这样过呢。

Sadly, some of the album’s most compelling moments are overpowered by the tedium of modern pop. There are painfully stretched ballads, overly sanitized rhythms, a hint of indeterminately “tropical” energy, and back-to-back booming hooks à la Sia. (Halsey’s first record company was Astralwerks, the mostly electronic label with whom Sia released an album in 2004.) Alongside guest appearances from Morissette, Dominic Fike, and Suga of BTS, Halsey’s collaborators on Manic include Greg Kurstin, Benny Blanco, and Jon Bellion, some of the world’s foremost hitmakers and shapers of the amorphous, chameleonic pop I’ve come to associate with sitting miserably in the backseat of a Lyft. Their presence here is felt a little too acutely.

遗憾的是，这张专辑的某些高光时刻却被流行音乐的单调所掩盖。痛苦延伸的民谣，过度简洁的节奏，某种不确定的“热带风格的”能量的暗示，以及带着Sia味道的编曲（Halsey的第一家唱片公司是Astralwerks，这是一家电子唱片公司，Sia在2004年与这家公司合作发行了一张专辑)。Morissette、Dominic Fike以及BTS的Suga参与了本张专辑的演唱，Halsey在《Manic 》中的合作者还包括了Greg Kurstin、Benny Blanco和Jon Bellion，他们都是驰名世界的流行音乐制作人和塑造者，我常常想起他们坐在网约车后座上的悲惨经历。他们在这张专辑里的存在感让人感觉有点太过强烈。

Though Manic features Halsey’s take on a handful of different genres—broody pop-R&B reminiscent of her early work; alt-rock-lite that is an aesthetic match to her persona; twangy country-pop sure to find a home on certain segments of pop radio—much of it has the same reflective surface and, at some points, the depth of an oil slick. The Morissette collab “Alanis’ Interlude,” which features a reference to John Mayer’s “Your Body Is a Wonderland,” is almost too irritating to endure: “Your pussy is a wonderland,” the pair warbles, infinitely more times than necessary. It is a low point for someone who is at times a clever songwriter.

虽然Halsey在《Manic》中采用了一小部分不同的风格——Broody Pop和R&B，这也很容易让人想起她的早期作品；另类摇滚风格与她的人设相匹配；在流行音乐电台的某些部分，轻柔乡村音乐气息也有其容身之处——这张专辑的音乐都有着相同的反射面，在某种程度上，其深度就像水上浮油一样。与Morissette合作的“Alanis’Interlude”引用了John Mayer的“Your Body Is a Wonderland”，这首歌几乎让人无法忍受:“Your pussy is a wonderland（你的xx宛如仙境），”两人低声吟唱着，次数未免过多。对于一个时而聪明的唱作人来说，这是一个低谷。

Despite some missteps, Halsey’s appeal is clear: It’s a singularly difficult time to be a young person, and she is warmly attuned to that reality. “I don’t wanna be somebody in America just fighting the hysteria,” she sings on the album opener “Ashley,” framing her personal frustrations within the broader sociopolitical context shaping our collective experiences. What does it mean to be a woman in pain in a country that dismisses you? What is the significance of loneliness in a society that seems to require it? How much compassion does a broken self deserve? On Manic, Halsey proves she isn’t quite the radical she thinks she is. But maybe she doesn’t have to be.

尽管专辑中有一些失误，但Halsey的吸引力非常显而易见：对于年轻人来说，这是一个非常困难的时期，但她能热情地适应现实。“I don’t wanna be somebody in America just fighting the hysteria（我不想成为美国的某个大人物，成天歇斯底里地斗争着）”她在专辑的开场单曲“Ashley”中唱道，在更广阔的社会政治背景下，塑造了我们共同经历的个人挫折。在一个放弃你的国家里，一个痛苦的女人意味着什么？在一个似乎需要孤独的社会里，孤独又有什么意义？破碎的自我值得多少同情？在《Manic》中，Halsey证明了她并不像自己想象的那样过激。但也许她也不必如此。