2015’s era of bright, side-
swept 
hair 
and 
Tumblr 
edginess is embodied in one 
famous figure: Halsey. Rising 
to 
extreme 
stardom 
with 
the release of her fantastical 
debut album, BADLANDS, she 
became a voice that many angsty 
teenagers clung to. Her music 
created an alternate reality, 
BADLANDS existing as a fake 
universe for teenage fans to get 
lost in. Her distinctive, almost 
warbling vocals have garnered 
both 
praise 
and 
criticism, 
especially since she has become 
more “mainstream.” In 2017, 
her album hopeless fountain 
youth channeled more of the 
radio-hit sound that she had 
avoided earlier in her career. 
Many fans started to lose 
interest, mostly since hopeless 
fountain youth was an album 
that attempted to maintain that 
“alternate universe” aura but 
didn’t have that unique sound 
that many attributed to Halsey. 
With 
her 
2020 
release, 
Manic, Halsey has ditched the 
mystical, imaginative concepts 
for a much more raw and 
grounded album. The songs 
sound hardly like anything 
you could find on her early 
releases. The album is chock 
full of ballads and deep-cuts, 
the majority of songs devoid 
of the heavily electronified 
instrumentals that reigned on 
BADLANDS. In a sense, the 

album is a maturation of the 
singer’s first album which she 
wrote when she was 19. Now 
25, Halsey has had more than 
half a decade of experience in 
the spotlight and the music 
industry in general, all of which 
is evident on Manic. While the 
subject matter and the actual 
sound of each individual song 
shows a lot of growth, the 
album as a whole doesn’t quite 

hit the mark.
Unfortunately, 
the 
album 
falls short through its lack of 
unity. 
Songs 
like 
“Without 
You”, 
(a 
single 
obviously 
written for radio play) and 
“I HATE EVERYBODY” just 
seem so remarkably out of place 
among the songs that actually 
tell a story. The presence of 
these uber-pop, very shallow 
songs automatically discredits 

so much of what was really 
well-done on the record. These 
types of tracks would have 
worked on the singer’s earlier 
work, as the entire feel of those 
albums benefited from some 
bouncy, easy-listening songs. 
Manic’s purpose, from Halsey’s 
own words, is meant to be a 
personal 
record, 
channeling 
the real person behind Halsey: 
Ashley Frangipane. While her 
attempts to do this are clear, 
the 
execution 
isn’t 
exactly 
successful. 
There are snippets of passion 
and 
intentful 
songwriting. 
Highlights 
like 
“Finally//
beautiful 
stranger” 
and 
“929” show a side of her 
that the world hasn’t seen 
before — significantly more 
introspective than her older 
work, these tracks sound like 
Halsey’s personal confessions. 
Since her 2015 album, she 
has been in two high-profile 
relationships, one with rapper 
G-Eazy 
and 
another 
with 
Yungblud. Many of the slower 
songs show the real side of 
these relationships as well as 
their endings. It’s the first time 
Halsey seems to have dealt with 
these topics with a great sense 
of maturity.
An album like this, while 
flawed and a bit all over the 
place, bodes well for Halsey’s 
future 
career. 
Across 
her 
discography, her intellectual 
growth is evident to anyone 
listening. Manic may not be 
Halsey’s apex, but it certainly 
shows a big step in the right 
direction.

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Monday, January 27, 2020 — 5A

Halsey’s deep cuts are a
letdown on new release

CAPITOL RECORDS

GIGI CIULLA
Daily Arts Writer

The year is 2020 and Eminem 
is still hell-bent on retroactively 
tainting his musical legacy 
with garbage records. The last 
couple years have seen tasteless 
lyrics tinged in homophobia 
and sexism, immature lash-
outs against detractors and 
unrelenting negativity directed 
at other rappers and celebrities. 
On his newest record, surprise 
released 
on 
Jan. 
17, 
the 
legendary best-selling rapper is 
once again victimizing himself 
line after unnecessarily edgy 
line. And predictably so.
Music To be Murdered By 
is far more tolerable than his 
offensively unlistenable 2017 
record Revival. Most of the 
instrumentation is a lot more 
palatable. “You Gon’ Learn” is 
the highlight with its jittery 
percussion 
and 
wavering, 
pitched 
background 
vocals. 
“Lock It Up” sounds kind of 
like a 14-year-old’s first trap 
beat cooked up on a pirated 
copy of FL Studio, and it’s 
almost endearing. Royce Da 
5’9” is featured on three tracks, 
which means three guaranteed 
breaths of fresh air in which I 
don’t have to listen to Eminem 
whining.
When it comes down to 
it though, most of the usual 

modern era Marshall Mathers 
missteps are in full effect. I 
did a little chuckle and sigh 
when I saw Ed Sheeran and 
Skylar Grey on the tracklist 
— oh, Eminem, will you ever 
learn? — But I could not stop 
laughing through album opener 
“Premonition 
- 
Intro.” 
If 
someone asked me what would 

be the absolute worst way to 
open a hypothetical Eminem 
surprise album, I would have 
replied with, “An intro track 
where he complains about his 
ratings and attacks his critics.” 
Lo and behold.
Wasting features on mediocre 
tracks is a violation of the hip-

hop honor code, and Eminem 
is in flagrant transgression 
of the law. How does he sleep 
at night after putting hip-hop 
legends like Black Thought and 
Q-Tip on a beat as ear-grating 
as “Yah Yah”? I’m disappointed 
that Busta Rhymes’s iconic ’96 
single “Woo Hah!! Got You All 
In Check” will now forever be 
associated with the awfully 
executed vocal sample on “Yah 
Yah.” But that’s not his worst 
offense on the tracklist.
Eminem’s greatest crime was 
somehow convincing millions 
of people that the speedy-
quick-rappity-rap bullshit from 
the last minute of “Godzilla” is 
remotely enjoyable. How it has 
50 million listens on Spotify 
is 
beyond 
me 
— 
syllables 
per second will never be a 
meaningful metric in assessing 
the quality of a song. It’s a 
shame because the beat has 
contagious concert energy and 
the late Juice WRLD’s hook is 
heat. It would be playlistable 
as hell if Vince Staples was 
rapping over it instead.
Corny writing is a plague that 
puts the album on its deathbed. 
I don’t know where the idea 
came from that good writing 
is 
equivalent 
to 
squeezing 
multiple meanings into a shitty 
metaphor. Hip hop would be a 
pitiful sport if double entendres 
won trophies. I think when 
Eminem says “I’m coming after 
you like the letter V,” he wants 

my mind to be blown when I 
realize he could be referring 
to the order of the letters “U” 
and “V” in the alphabet or the 
titular character from “V For 
Vendetta.” To me, that’s the 
rap game equivalent of sending 
your Tinder match a poem 
where the first letter of each 
line spells out “SEND NUDES.”
This 
“multiple 
interpretations” 
writing style is stale throughout 
the entire album, save for one 
creative 
application 
on 
the 
track “Darkness.” The point-
of-view 
imperceptibly 
shifts 
between Eminem’s own inner 
hysteria before a concert, and 
the perspective of Las Vegas 
massacre 
shooter 
Stephen 
Paddock. The crestfallen piano 
melody is a perfectly moody 
backdrop that lets Eminem’s 
narrative take the spotlight, 
and the hook is Eminem’s 
best in years. Even the “Hello 
darkness, 
my 
old 
friend” 

sample — lifted from Simon 
& Garfunkel’s “The Sound of 
Silence” — makes for a pretty 
smooth motif, despite the line 
being memed to death thanks 
to Arrested Development. The 
track is the closest thing to a 
success Eminem has on the 
whole record, but it’s not quite 
there. It’s just too unsettling 
and off-kilter. The long-winded 
parallel between a nervous 
Eminem and a mass murderer 
of very recent memory leaves a 
bad taste in my mouth, and the 
audio clips of a mass shooting 
are discomforting even in the 
context of the song. The music 
video may end with a call to 
action for gun control, but the 
rest of the song doesn’t add up 
to that message.
Music To Be Murdered By 
doubles down on Eminem’s 
decade-long 
commitment 
to making bad music. His 
childish insistence that he’s 

“murdering” people with his 
“killer” lyrics is down-right 
pathetic. In a cringe-inducing 
Instagram post, Eminem writes 
to his critics, “These bars are 
only meant for the sharpest 
knives in the drawer … For the 
rest of you, please listen more 
closely next time.” Apparently 
if you don’t like Eminem’s new 
music, then this album was a big 
fat roast, and if you couldn’t tell 
that you just got #destroyed, 
then you’re too dumb and you 
just didn’t get it. His obsession 
with getting positive critical 
response to his music is at odds 
with his persistent wailing 
that his critics are unwoke and 
unintelligent. Don’t even get me 
started on Ebro’s embarrassing 
tweet 
comparing 
Eminem’s 
supposed lack of respect to 
being Black. Please just kill me 
already, because Music To Be 
Murdered By doesn’t live up to 
its title.

A (shitty) surprise from 
Eminem: His new album

ALBUM REVIEW
ALBUM REVIEW

DYLAN YONO
Daily Arts Writer

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

“The Gimmicks” is set against 
the backdrop of the Armenian 
genocide; it follows the journey of 
two inseparable friends — brothers, 
really — who embark on two wildly 
different 
paths. 
One 
brother, 
the reclusive and, frankly, one-
dimensional Ruben, is obsessed 
with righting the wrongs of the 
Turkish denial of the genocide, 
and joins the guerilla-terrorist 
organization 
The 
Armenian 
Secret Army for the Liberation 
of Armenia (ASALA). The other 
brother, the massive, unibrowed 
and personable Avo, leaves for 
America to try to help Ruben before 
he recognizes his toxicity, deciding 
then to pursue a short professional 
wrestling career to try to get back 
to his teenage sweetheart, Mina, 
in Armenia. However, the central 
plot revolves around what happens 
between the years that Avo leaves 
for America in the late ‘70s and 
the 1989 search that Avo’s former 
wrestling manager, Terry Krill, 
embarks on a journey to find Avo 
after losing contact with him in 
1980. It soon becomes apparent 
that no one has heard anything 
of Avo’s whereabouts for years, 
and the novel’s focus is to fill in 
the intervening years of Avo’s life, 
slowly unraveling the truth of what 
happened, why he left and where 
he is now.
Using 
this 
framework, 
McCormick 
crafts 
alluring 
characters, 
paints 
a 
heart-
wrenchingly vivid portrait of 
the scars that history can leave 
and questions the different ways 
we can express our national 
identities. The passages dealing 
with these elements and ideas 
exemplify “The Gimmicks” at its 
most powerful. McCormick deftly 
establishes Avo as a sympathetic 
character, and by placing him at 
the center of an unresolved history, 
McCormick gives the reader the 
fearful anticipation and curiosity 
that Krill and others searching 
for Avo feel. The book gradually 
unravels the enigma surrounding a 
character that the reader becomes 
emotionally invested in, and adds 
excitement to the prospect of the 
tendrils of time frames stretching 
to meet each other, and thus fill 
in the missing history. The truth 
seems painfully just out of reach, 

which endears the reader to the 
characters all the more so. 
In contrast to Avo, Ruben and 
his 
juxtaposition 
against 
his 
brother sow unease in the reader, 
as the truth unravels and the reader 
can be no more than a passive 
spectator to the self-destructive 
vortex of Ruben’s personality and 
radicalism. He reminds the reader 
of a family member who is always 
just out of reach, slowly drifting 
away and hopelessly sabotaging the 
lives of those in close proximity. All 
you can do is watch and shake your 
head. To this capacity, Ruben is 
an effective plot device. But while 
the book bills Ruben as a main 
character in its blurb, Ruben ends 
up being relegated to the sidelines 
as a sinister and abstract force that 
the reader might end up loathing. 
As effectively as McCormick uses 

Ruben as a source of conflict and 
disruption, what results is an 
unlikeable caricature. Later in the 
novel, when McCormick attempts 
to provide insight into Ruben’s 
state of mind, it is too late: His role 
as a toxic influence was solidified 
early on, and whatever kinship Avo 
ever felt toward Ruben becomes 
more elusive and confusing to the 
reader.
In spite of Ruben, though, 
McCormick is still able to deliver 
a somber and poignant character-
focused narrative. However, he 
mismanages the plot resolutions, 
and the unfulfilling conclusions 
bogged this novel down. The 
resolution to Avo’s story arc in 
particular undercut the entire 
narrative that led up to it, mostly 
because there was an absence 
of a resolution. The reader is 

presented the fundamental facts 
and narrative of what happened 
in 
those 
missing 
years, 
but 
McCormick doesn’t explore what 
these truths actually mean, and, 
more importantly, why the reader 
should 
even 
care. 
Ultimately 
the novel ended where it began, 
with all of the damage, harm and 
conflict that was revealed over the 
course of the novel never being 
addressed, or redressed, for that 
matter. 
The journey to reaching the 
truth is rendered cheap, and 
becomes a trivial exercise in 
curiosity; especially telling are 
the conclusions reached by those 
trying to find Avo. For an entire 
book’s worth of earnest searching 
and uprooting of characters, the 
truth doesn’t end up having any 
significant impact, and one begins 
to wonder why such an effort was 
made to skirt around the solution 
to begin with, aside for the sake of 
narrative power.
The 
plot 
ends 
up 
feeling 
unfinished, 
and 
the 
lack 
of 
satisfying closure renders the 400 
pages of buildup moot. Terry Krill, 
whom the reader is supposed to 
project themselves onto as an 
outside party looking for answers, 
ends up in the same place as the 
reader, but somehow with even 
less of a resolution. While this 
can be an effective strategy to 
accentuate a story’s poignancy 
and bittersweetness, Krill seems 
content without the resolution that 
he spent a long and emotionally 
draining 
investigative 
process 
trying to find; this does not sit well 
with the reader. 
With such a powerful buildup, 
“The 
Gimmicks” 
conclusion 
was incredibly confusing on an 
emotional level. This distress I 
felt raised interesting questions, 
though. 
Should 
a 
book 
that 
meditates 
on 
the 
Armenian 
Genocide, extremism, obsession 
and history-denial have a fulfilling 
or 
satisfying 
ending? 
More 
importantly, isn’t the frustration 
and futility of the novel’s resolution 
emblematic of how we can do 
nothing to undo the atrocities of 
the past, aside from continuing 
forward? I will continue to wrestle 
with those questions, and as I do, 
though I am ultimately dissatisfied 
with the novel, I continue to ponder 
the relationships we have with 
history, and if “The Gimmicks” can 
provide insight into the nature of 
those relationships.

Novel set amid Armenian 
genocide cheapens itself

TATE LEFRENIER
For the Daily

Maniac

Halsey 

Capitol Records 

ALBUM REVIEW
ALBUM REVIEW

Music to be 
Murdered By

Eminem

Shady/Aftermath/
Interscope Records

BOOK REVIEW

The Gimmicks

Chris McCormick

Harper

Jan. 7, 2020

