With the release of her fourth album, If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power, in late August, Halsey transformed into the kind of bold, forward-thinking artist her earlier work suggested she was trending toward. Aided by emphatically moody but never oppressive electronic and atmospheric orchestrations by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, one of the LP’s standouts remains the insurgent “I Am Not a Woman, I’m a God.”
In the latest video for the energetic track — filmed live, directed by Dani Vitale, and released via YouTube on Saturday (September 18) — Halsey sings the track in a pretty straight-ahead fashion, decked out in a white dress and standing amid a dazzling display of multicolored lights. If it were just this scene for three minutes, it’d make for a pretty compelling clip.
But this is Halsey, so there’s a twist. In this case, it’s a ton of blood.
Around halfway through, she starts getting splattered with dark cherry-colored fake blood, and by the time the song ends, it’s dripping down into her mouth, creating a haunting Greco-Roman statuesque silhouette of violence. A pretty cool visual!
Contrasted with the song’s regal yet ominous original visual, which finds Halsey claiming her power, this new version complements the inner turmoil of the song’s lyrics quite nicely. “Every day, I got a smile where my frown goes,” she sings in the first version. “A couple bodies in the garden where the grass grows.”
If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power reached No. 2 on the Billboard 200 albums chart. It’s a huge accomplishment in Halsey’s career as a visionary artist, which is why it came with a short film to accompany its release. This latest “I Am Not a Woman, I’m a God” clip is not part of that, but you’ll get lost in it anyway.
