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Watch Halsey's epic performance of “Ego” at the 2024 VMAs

Singer, songwriter, poet, painter, beauty founder and all-around constellation legend Halsey just celebrated her epic return to the VMAs stage with a performance of “Ego” from her upcoming album, The great imitator. The woman with the many hyphens wore fire engine red curls, a casual white top and jeans.

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2024 MTV Video Music Awards show

Michael Coppola//Getty Images

Watch the full performance here:

As a reminder, Halsey last took home a Moon Person for Best K-Pop in 2019 for her collaboration with BTS *and* the wasteland The hitmaker was also nominated for Artist of the Year. This marks not only Halsey's return to the VMA stage since performing “Closer” with The Chainsmokers in 2016, but also her first full-length musical project since being diagnosed with lupus and T-cell lymphoproliferative disease.

“I made this record in the space between life and death. And it feels like I've waited forever for you to have it. I'll wait a little longer. I've already waited a decade,” Halsey wrote alongside an Instagram post showing one of the album's cover versions.

The About-Face Beauty founder recently spoke about the process of recording her upcoming album during her illness and told PAPER Magazine“I wrote much better music. I really stopped and said to myself, 'Dude, you've grown up! You've grown as a writer.' When I started writing again, it was so effortless.”

Halsey's fifth album takes the singer through different eras of pop culture, from the '70s to the present, and will be released on October 25th.

They explained their influences on the album: “I grew out of my habits a bit by taking some space and that made room for more. I also became a lot more personal about everything. I made songs that sounded like songs I wanted to hear. I didn't think about what I was going to perform. I quoted a lot of musicians I was listening to at the time because the treatment is two hours and you're sitting there. Everything from PJ Harvey to Portishead and Minnie Ripperton to Massive Attack and Bruce Springsteen.”

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