Halsey wrote a confessional letter to Nine Inch Nails admitting to "plagiarising" them in a bid to get them to work on her new album.
The Bad at Love singer's latest record, If I Can't Have Love, I Want Power, was produced by the iconic industrial rock band's Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.
Halsey, who uses both she/her and they/them pronouns, believes fans who raised an eyebrow at the unusual collaboration should not be surprised, however, as she has been a NIN fan for years and wrote to them admitting lots of her music borrows from theirs.
"I was just really honest and said I was a huge fan and I've been plagiarising you guys for years - badly - and I'm not arrogant enough to believe that I have anything new to offer you, but this album is about pregnancy, gender identity, body horror," they told NME in a discussion about penning the letter. "The most important thing to me is that this album has tension - it needs to be visceral, or I'm doing a disservice to the message."
The star also described approaching Trent and Atticus as "the scariest moment of my life" and revealed that she wouldn't have made the album without them. She likens the experience to visiting Berlin's notoriously exclusive nightclub, Berghain.
"I've been to Berlin like 15 times and still won't go to Berghain because I'm scared they're gonna turn me away at the door," they explained. "If they say no to me, I'm literally never gonna recover, so I just don't even wanna go. That's kind of what this felt like - waiting outside Berghain being like, 'Are they gonna think I'm cool enough?'"
If I Can't Have Love, I Want Power was released in August.