Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic
Alternative Addiction
Charleston Gazette-Mail	(favorable)
Noisey	A-
Pitchfork Media	4.9/10
Rolling Stone
The State Journal-Register	(favorable)

Badlands is the debut studio album by American singer and songwriter Halsey, released on August 28, 2015 by Astralwerks and Capitol.Badlands debuted at number two on the Billboard 200 chart with first-week sales of 97,000 copies. The album was preceded by the digital release of two singles, "Ghost" and "New Americana". The third single from the album, "Colors", was released on February 9, 2016. A new version of the song "Castle" was released as the album's fourth single to promote the feature film, The Huntsman: Winter's War. Roman Holiday was featured on the second season of the TV Show Younger.

The name "Badlands" is a reference to Halsey's state of mind while writing the album, to give a physical place as a metaphor for a desolate and lonely mind. Musically, the album is mainly rooted in electropop,alternative pop, and synthpop.

According to Halsey, Badlands is a concept album that focuses on the fictional dystopian society known as The Badlands. The city is surrounded by a desert wasteland, keeping the inhabitants of The Badlands captive. The album was inspired by post-apocalyptic movies such as The Fifth Element. After writing the first few songs, Halsey came to the realization that the entire concept was a metaphor for her mental state. Halsey states that she created the Badlands as an escape from her real life struggles. In her opinion, the metaphor was that even with no escape, there is still optimism that there is somewhere else to go. The album was executive produced by Lido.

"Ghost" was released as Halsey's debut single on October 27, 2014, with an accompanying music video filmed in Tokyo, which was directed by Malia James and Ryan Witt. "Ghost" was released to radio on April 7, 2015. Halsey announced "New Americana" as the second single from the album, which was officially released on July 10, 2015. The official music video for "New Americana" came out on September 25, 2015. "New Americana" peaked at number 60 on the Billboard Hot 100. "Colors" serves as the official third single. It was released to alternative radio on February 9, 2016. The fourth single, "Castle", was released on April 8, 2016, along with a soundtrack version for the film The Huntsman: Winter's War.

...
Wikipedia