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In her new video for “Strangers,” Halsey and her duet partner Lauren Jauregui play boxers who beat each other bloody. While filming the clip, which Halsey says was partly inspired by Christina Aguilera’s “sweaty and filthy and really sexy” video for “Dirrty,” she and Lauren didn’t pull any punches…literally.
“We trained with real boxers and stunt coaches and got in the ring and fought each other. It was so fun!” Halsey tells ABC Radio. “‘Strangers’ is about this relationship where these two people are kinda beating the life out of each other emotionally, it’s this like give and take, y’know? And it does feel very much like a boxing match.”
“Sometimes one person’s winning, sometimes another person’s winning, but they’re both tired and they don’t want to be hurting each other, but they feel like they have to,” she explains.
And since the song is about a same-sex relationship, Halsey also wanted to make sure the video didn’t fall back on cliches.
“There’s a lot of videos where people kind of portray female/female relationships in a way that’s really overtly sensual, it’s eye candy,” Halsey tells ABC Radio. “It’s to make you go, ‘Oh my gosh!’ y’know? And so I didn’t wanna do that with this video. I wanted to really show the pain of the real relationship.”
Halsey recently wrapped up a Latin American tour with Lauren as her opening act — it was the Fifth Harmony singer’s first solo trek. The North American leg of Halsey’s tour — her final round of dates in support of her platinum album hopeless fountain kingdom — kicks off July 8 in Montreal.
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