The Great Impersonator Songwriting Credits by Halsey

The Great Impersonator is built around Halsey writing each song as an imagined version of how her music might have sounded in a different decade, channeling artists from Dolly Parton, Cher, Stevie Nicks and David Bowie through to PJ Harvey, Kate Bush, The Cranberries, Evanescence and Bjork. The conceit grew out of her lupus and T-cell disorder diagnoses, which left her feeling like she was impersonating herself, and she co-wrote and co-produced the record around that confessional framing. The authorship works on two levels at once, with Halsey assuming the voice of a chosen influence on each track while keeping the lyrics rooted in her own health crisis and identity. The era-hopping is structural rather than cosmetic, with the production on each song shaped to match the artist and decade it pays tribute to.