Halsey has appeared on the cover of Billboard's most recent issue. In the in-depth interview, she spoke of an array of topics - including boy bands, politics and Kanye West. But Halsey also shared the powerful and lasting impact music has had on her, and reveals that she even owes her life to it till this day.

Far before she was the Halsey that is currently traveling the globe and performing at sold out arenas, she was Ashley Nicolette Frangipane from a small, “Friday Night Lights-esque” town in New Jersey. And in her senior year of high school she was diagnosed with bi-polar disorder, which lead to several weeks in a psychiatric hospital due to an attempted suicide.

She shared, “I had tried to kill myself. I was an adolescent; I didn’t know what I was doing. Because I was 17, I was still in a children’s ward. Which was terrifying. I was in there with 9-year-olds who had tried to kill themselves.”

According to the singer, the worst part of the hospitalization was her disconnection with the outside world. “There was no TV, no music, no nothing,” she said. But that factor lead to a life changing realization, “The day I got out of the hospital I was in the car and I was listening to Imagine Dragons. It was a fucking moment for me. I don’t think I realized how important music was to me before that…Three years later, I was opening their U.S. arena tour.”

It’s the strong sense of consolation from music that drives Halsey and allows her to do what she loves without overbearing worries: “I could be having the worst day of my life, hate my body, think I’m fat, think I suck, and as soon as I hear the first few notes of my intro, that all goes away,” she explains, “Everything that I hate about myself goes away when I walk onstage. That’s why I cling to it so much -- it keeps me from killing myself.”

You can read the full feature here. 

Image: Billboard