Halsey Safeword video: a lesson in musical obedience

HALSEY SAFEWORD VIDEO: A LESSON IN MUSICAL OBEDIENCE

With previously latex-loving artistes and celebs shunning rubber for other fabrics at early 2025 red carpet events such as February’s London Fashion Week and this month’s Brit Awards and Oscars, we surely owe a debt of gratitude to the Halsey Safeword video for single-handedly ensuring that latex, leather and, indeed, BDSM were placed fairly and squarely back in the public gaze a week or so ago.

For that was when she — or they, if you prefer (the US recording artist uses both pronouns) — released the official video for new track Safeword. It’s her fifth single since the release last September of her fifth album The Great Impersonator. But, unlike its four immediate predecessors, is a brand new track, not one taken from the album.

Top image: Halsey in leather and studs, as she appears at the beginning of the Safeword video

Left: Cover art for Halsey Safeword single (photo: Sarah Pardini); right: Halsey takes a bite of the cherry (still from Safeword video)

With energetically delivered punky lyrics and an equally punky co-production by Halsey, Austin Corona and Wyart Bernard, Safeword has been stated by the singer — in response to a fan request for a single-word description — as being about “obedience”. And she wasn’t kidding. The video by stylist and Sedition magazine founder Lana Jay Lackey enthusiastically explores numerous meanings of that word within the context of BDSM and fetish play.

Halsey appears initially as a dominatrix in leather and studs, then in a latex catsuit with rubber-clad pup slave on a collar and leash; as a submissive in skimpy black lingerie; as both a domme and sub in black leather and thighboots; in a leather head harness, collar and nipple chains crouching before a leather corseted domme; as a rubber mistress relaxing as her French maid dusts an ornament; hanging by the ankles from a suspension frame; drinking a milkshake balanced on a human drinks trolley; riding a saddled slave; and ending up expertly rope-bound as a human standard lamp.

From the artist’s blue period: latex-catsuited mistress Halsey with rubber-clad pup on collar and leash

But apart from that, there’s absolutely nothing in this Halsey Safeword video to set the pulses of pervs racing at all. So please do try to resist the urge to watch the whole video for yourselves before it disappears from YouTube (link below) as might well happen. Although it contains no actual nudity (a very conscious decision, we imagine), there’s enough edgy stuff here to make it a ‘Not Safe For Work’ choice — unless of course you happen to work somewhere like Libidex, where viewing tt will probably be compulsory.

We’ve included a YouTube link for the Halsey Safeword video at the bottom, and this article is illustrated by a selection of screenshots from the piece. These video grabs are not quite as sharp as the digital stills with which Libidex blog stories are usually illustrated, so we hope you can live with that!

Refreshment break: Halsey enjoys a milkshake courtesy of a passing human drinks trolley

Safeword has inevitably drawn gasps of admiration from various online commentators. Genius calls it “a feisty slice of riot grrl punk with BDSM-inspired lyrics and an accompanying NSFW music video that ups the kink factor significantly”.

Louder proclaims it to be “driven by a thumping punk-rock beat, distorted snappy guitar strums and raunchy lyrics that capture the star in an empowered, domineering mood with lines such as ‘I’m not a bad girl, I just like it wild style/I’m tough, I’m mean, I’m rough/Just say the safe word when you’ve had enough’.

Collider opines that  the Halsey Safeword video “dials up the heat to a whole new level. On the steamy song, Halsey channels the pure rockstar sounds of Joan Jett as they lay down the laws of the game”.

And Rolling Stone’s headline “Halsey goes full dominatrix in raging video for punk rock single Safeword” manages to sum it up nicely in just a dozen words.

Oh no, not the comfy chair! Halsey leans in for a spot of subservience to a leather-corseted domme…

If you were not previously too familiar with the oeuvre of Ashley Nicolette Frangipane aka Halsey, you might want to have a read of her extremely — and we mean extremely — exhaustive Wikipedia page. It’s actually the longest Wikipedia page (link below) for anyone we’ve ever had to check out in the interests of research for this blog!

And we also feel obliged to mention that in all our other online researches into other persons of interest, we have never before encountered a separate — and again exhaustive — page devoted to an artist’s complex personal health diagnosis. Directed, as we were, to an EDS.clinic page (link below), we were able to read that, following the birth of her son in 2021, Halsey “revealed a series of challenging diagnoses, including Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS), Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS), Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS), Sjögren's syndrome, and more recently, lupus and a rare T-cell lymphoproliferative disorder.

“Their openness about these health battles,” declares the clinic’s introduction, “has resonated with fans and contributed significantly to public awareness of these often misunderstood chronic illnesses.” It’s a move many would no doubt consider brave but also admirable.

…before turning the tables on her blonde mistress for a quick spot of indoor dressage

And incidentally, Genius.com was kind enough to post the full lyrics of Safeword as part of its coverage (link below). For nostalgic reasons we were particularly struck by the song’s Post-Chorus, which goes:

I don't gotta listen to you (You'rе not the boss of me)
I don't gotta listen to you (You're not the boss of me)
I don't gotta listen to you (You're not the boss of me)
Yes, sir, no, sir, you're not the boss of me

If you’re wondering where you might have previously heard the phrase repeated at the end of each line, let us put you out of your misery. It’s most likely to have been when listening to Boss Of Me by They Might Be Giants, the title song for much-loved US TV show Malcolm in the Middle (which incidentally, among other things, introduced many of us to the acting talents of a certain Bryan Cranston). You’re welcome.

Finally roped into light duties: Halsey becomes a character from a John Willie cartoon (or a Gord photoshoot)

Halsey/EDSclinic
Halsey/Instagram
Halsey/Website
Halsey/Wikipedia
Safeword lyrics/Genius.com
Safeword video/YouTube