Haley had a tumultuous but fulfilling relationship with her parents!
Ashley Nicolette Frangipane, known as Halsey, was born to Chris and Nicole Frangipane in 1994 in New Jersey. They were young parents who dropped out of college after Halsey was conceived and later welcomed two more kids, Sévian and Dante.
The dynamic had ups and downs, but at the end of the day, they are a family and have each other’s backs. “Families go through cycles,” said the Without Me singer, who now has a great relationship with her parents.
Chris and Nicole were young parents
Halsey’s parents became pregnant while still in college, and the Eastside singer grew up in their college dorm for the first few years. Later, they dropped out to focus on raising little Halsey and growing their family together.
Both parents took up jobs to feed their family. Nicole became a security guard while Chris worked as a car dealership manager. In a chat with Marie Claire in July 2018, Halsey said, “My parents moved where the jobs were,” about her parents shifting places in search of jobs.
As a result, she had to change schools almost every year, leaving her with no friends. Until the age of 13, “I didn’t have a lot of friends,” Halsey recalled.
Halsey’s diverse family
The singer has a biracial family with a Black father and a White mother, making her a mixed-race child. The singer-songwriter talked about accepting herself as a biracial and “White passing” woman.
“I’m proud to be in a biracial family. I’m proud of who I am. I look like a white girl, but I don’t feel like one. I’m a black woman. So it’s been weird navigating that.” She told Playboy in 2017.
Halsey talked about her childhood experiences with a Black father, “When I was little if someone saw me and my dad walking through, like, a grocery store parking lot, women would come up to us and be like, ‘Sweetie, are you okay?'” she recalled. “Because they saw a little White girl walking with a Black man.”
She recalled her father being questioned while “picking me up from preschool, or taking me to the doctor or to get my hair done.”
“He’s with this little white baby. And things don’t always go down civilly. My dad finds himself in situations often where he’s having to defend himself, or facing police intervention,” Halsey added.
The Colors singer had a rough childhood
In an interview with Rolling Stone, the singer recalled that she grew up in a chaotic household, and “there was always s— being thrown.”
She also told Marie Claire that her childhood was unpredictable because of her mother’s bipolar disorder, which the singer also inherited. “We’d be like, ‘What’s for dinner?’ And [my mom would] be like, ‘Ice cream and roller-skating.’ And we’d go to the roller rink and eat ice cream for dinner,” said Halsey.
However, watching her mother be herself made the singer more self-accepting. It “made me more open to being myself,” she said.
“If I had normal parents and crazy things started happening to me, I’d probably be like, ‘I’m a freak.’ But since I watched my mom do it, it was just normal to me,” said the About-Face founder.
Halsey’s parents’ were her artistic influences
The singer-songwriter is grateful to her parents for letting her pursue her artistic instincts. “My parents were great at making sure I didn’t know we were poor,” she told The Guardian.
Halsey’s parents sacrificed a lot to give her all the resources she needed for her artistic pursuits. “They got me a secondhand violin and put it on the payment plan. I changed my mind and wanted a viola — they got me the viola. Every holiday, I got an art kit. I’d wreck the carpets and walls. They’d lose their security deposit. All because I wanted to paint my bedroom,” the singer said.
She shared the moment she overheard her mom say, “‘We can’t hold her back. We don’t know what she can become,’” to her dad, who was reluctant about her ambitions.
Halsey told Glamour how her father inspired her to remember every detail of every encounter. “Watching my dad be like that affected me as an artist tremendously. I have met tens of thousands of fans; I don’t forget any of them. Ever,” she said.
Halsey’s parents are also grandparents
On July 14, 2021, Halsey welcomed her son Ender Ridley Aydin with ex-boyfriend and screenwriter Alev Aydin.
The singer struggles to conceive amidst her endometriosis and past miscarriages. She thought she could never be a mother, but when she found out she could, she called her mother Nicole and cried.
“For a long time, I didn’t think that having a family was something I was going to be able to do, and it’s very, very important to me,” she revealed in the liner notes of her album Manic.
Halsey admires her mother Nicola’s strength
The Gasoline singer has the coolest mom! She gushes about Nicola and admires her strength for carrying and owning herself so effortlessly.
“She was always so strong and so in charge of herself. That was always what I saw: a woman who was strong and bold and different. She loves what I’m doing. Honestly, I think she’s really proud of herself,” Halsey said about her mom.
Nichola justifies the cool mom tag as she got matching tattoos with her daughter when she was 15-years-old. “My mom is awesome,” Halsey gushhed.
Growing up with her mother was like a jamming session itself. Rather than kids songs, she grew up listening to Cold Play, Country Love and more. “She raised me listening to Nirvana and Courtney Love and Coldplay, Gin Blossoms, The Cranberries and stuff,” Halsey told Elle in 2015.
The singer and mother of Ender often shares pictures of her parents on Instagram. On mother’s day, she shared a post with caption, “happy Mother’s Day to my best friend.” She also wrote a heartfelt message to Chris on father’s day “I love you and I’m grateful for everything you have blessed me with,” she concluded the caption with.
