Halsey is in charge on her newly released punk rock single, “Safeword.” The record arrives alongside a video directed by Lana Jay Lackey, which features the musician walking a latex-covered figure around like a dog on a chain in one scene, using someone else as an end table in another, and then turning the tables so that she’s the one getting spanked and tied up.
“Yes, sir, no, sir, on all fours/Are you ready to get what you’ve been waiting for?/I’m not a criminal, I’m just a wild child/I’m not a bad girl, I just like it wild style/I’m tough, I’m mean, I’m rough/Just say the safe word when you’ve had enough,” Halsey shouts. “You’re going down, yeah, I’m taking you down/We’re going for a ride, I’m the queen of this town/I got a bad reputation from the fucking around/I got a standing ovation from the other on the playground.”
Halsey teased “Safeword” on” X (formerly Twitter) in the days leading up to its release. When a fan asked for the song to be described in one word, the singer wrote back: “Obedience.” The record marks their first new song since sharing their fifth studio album, The Great Impersonator, in October. Drawing a parallel between the releases, Halsey responded to a fan who asked if “Safeword” would be similiar to the “Dog Years” lyric “I’ve been a really good dog, can I come inside?” to which she responded: “Bad dog.”
The Great Impersonator has its fair share of rock moments, an area Halsey excels in across her pop-heavy discography. “Lonely Is the Muse” channels their love of Evanescence, while “Ego” is more a reflection of the time they spent growing up in New Jersey.
“There’s a constant tension between the playful wit in the music and the sluggish gloom of the vocals,” Rolling Stone wrote in a review of the record. “But the best moments on The Great Impersonator come when the music wins out. Playing around with the past seems to shake up her imagination — and point her toward the future.”
Later this year, Halsey will embark on the Great Impersonator tour, their first extended run on the road since 2022. “I really like putting on a big show,” Halsey recently shared on The Tonight Show. “I think people are usually pretty surprised when they come to see me in concert, especially if they only know me for the songs on the radio. The show can be quite, like, aggressive. Like, I’m like a little demon. I get out there and have to exorcise some stuff.”
