Halsey's new album is really going there. Promoted with the tagline, "Hi, my name is Ashley. It's nice to meet you," it suggests her fans are meeting the woman behind the musician (her real name is Ashley Frangipane) for the first time. Its title, Manic, riffs off her diagnosis of bipolar disorder (once known as manic depression because people tend to experience extreme highs and lows). Halsey has decided it's time to get real. And that's plain in the cover shoot she did for ELLE Australia's December issue. "I feel very lucky to be able to look at those photos and feel good about myself," she says. "I've waited for that moment my entire life and there I am, with the hair that my mother and father gave me and with [minimal] makeup on, in a way I'm proud of. To be cool with the world seeing me that way… that says a lot to me about how I've grown as a person. I feel really happy and peaceful."

Halsey wears Louis Vuitton. Photographed by Kai Z Feng, styled by Naomi Smith, hair by Florido, makeup by Denika Bedrossian and manicure by Marisa Carmichael.

But it took a lot for the 25-year-old to get to that place. She got her diagnosis of bipolar disorder after a suicide attempt at age 17, which she has spoken about publicly. Around the same time, she began writing songs and getting big on Tumblr. At 19, she uploaded her first track, "Ghost", to Soundcloud—and the whirlwind began. Within a year, she'd signed with music label Universal and released her first EP. From the get-go Halsey has occupied the in-between, as a biracial, bisexual woman who's copped homophobic abuse. Her fan base, though, is strong, with 12 million followers on Twitter and 16.9 million on Instagram . And she's in constant communication with them, getting unfiltered feedback on her music.

She's still terrified of cancel culture, however. "When I first started out, my team didn't really understand cancel culture… There would be a bad response to something I said and I would be like, 'This is it, I'm done.' And everyone would be like, 'Relax, you're not going to lose your career over one thing you said on the internet.' Now it's like, 'No, you actually fucking can.'" Yet she still speaks out. Her speech at the 2018 Women's March was a kind of spoken poem meets rally cry in which she referenced instances of sexual assault in her life, saying, "Every friend that I know has a story like mine." In her song "Nightmare", which could be interpreted as a "fuck you" to the patriarchy (or at least any man who's ever uttered, "Come on, little lady, give us a smile"), she laments, "I'm tired and angry, but somebody should be."

Halsey is deeply aware of the importance of walking the walk, as well as talking the talk. "I think we need to make people take responsibility when they have a platform. But it can be frustrating when that leads to people doing stuff they don't really understand, because they're afraid of being attacked for not saying enough," she says. "It needs to be real, otherwise you're doing more harm than good." But she knows she's no politician. "If I could make sense of everything that was going on in the world right now, I wouldn't be a musician. Taylor Swift and I were once talking about our positions as female in culture and she said, 'We're not gladiators, we're musicians.'"

Halsey is clearly moving into a good place right now, thoughtful about the responsibilities her success brings. She's also in a good place with her relationship: she was dating British musician Yungblud (aka 22-year-old Dominic Harrison) for most of this year after they collaborated on the track "11 Minutes", but she's recently been seeing American Horror Story actor Evan Peters , someone who she tweeted about having a crush on years ago. Let no one question Halsey's ability to manifest. Despite her success, she says, "I believe very, very vehemently that I don't need to do this if I don't want to. I will stop the second I don't enjoy it any more and have no qualms about that. I do this because I f**king love it, because I really couldn't imagine doing anything else."