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Halsey reveals she’s been battling illness in “The End,” first song off her new album
The singer-songwriter Halsey explores an intersection between love and illness in “The End,” an emotional ballad released Tuesday as the first single off her upcoming, not yet titled fifth album.
Following the success of 2021’s “If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power,” the Grammy nominee’s newest track chronicles a chilling health struggle and a relationship underpinned by questions about mortality.
Halsey initially previewed its release on Instagram earlier this week and confirmed the drop in her latest post to the social media platform, which included videos of the artist’s own medical battle, one she had not spoken about publicly before.
“long story short, i’m Lucky to be alive. short story long, i wrote an album. it begins with The End. out now,” Halsey captioned the post. Its first slide is footage of her massaging her calves while seemingly in pain. She has medical tape wrapped around one arm.
“Seriously, I feel like an old lady,” she says in that video. “I told myself I’m giving myself two more years to be sick. At 30, I’m having a rebirth and I’m not going to be sick and I’m going to look super hot and have lots of energy. And I’m just going to get to redo my 20s in my 30s.”
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The post includes another video in which she’s seated in an infusion chair and wearing a face mask. Halsey tells the camera that “today is day one of treatment,” before a subsequent video gives a longer look at various hospital visits that appear to have been recorded over a period of time.
Halsey did not explicitly name any particular sickness or diagnosis, but a press statement issued along with the release of “The End” said that in conjunction with its drop, Halsey is donating to The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and the Lupus Research Alliance. Halsey tagged both organizations in the caption of her Instagram post.
Leukemia and lymphoma are separate cancers, one of the blood and the other of the lymphatic system, respectively. Lupus is an autoimmune disease in which the body’s immune system attacks its own healthy tissue. It can potentially affect joints, skin, circulation and a range of organs.
“Every couple of years now, a doctor says I’m sick/ Pulls out a brand new bag of tricks/ And then they lay it on me/ And at first, it was my brain, then a skeleton in pain/ And I don’t like to complain, but I’m saying sorry,” Halsey sings in the opening verse of “The End.”
She has opened up about different health struggles in the past, including being diagnosed in 2022 with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, Sjogren’s syndrome, mast cell activation syndrome, or MCAS, and postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, or POTS. At the time, Halsey said she and her doctors were still searching for a root cause possibly related to autoimmunity.
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Bela Karolyi, the charismatic if polarizing gymnastics coach who turned young women into champions and the United States into an international power, has died. He was 82.
A spokesperson for USA Gymnastics confirmed to CBS News by email that Karolyi died Friday. No cause of death was given.
Karolyi and wife Martha trained multiple Olympic gold medalists and world champions in the U.S. and Romania, including Nadia Comaneci and Mary Lou Retton.
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“A big impact and influence on my life,” Comaneci, who was just 14 when Karolyi coached her to gold for Romania at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, posted on Instagram.
The Karolyis defected to the United States in 1981 and over the next 30-plus years became a guiding force in American gymnastics, though not without controversy. Bela helped guide Retton — all of 16 — to the Olympic all-around title at the 1984 Games in Los Angeles and memorably helped an injured Kerri Strug off the floor at the 1996 Games in Atlanta after Strug’s vault secured the team gold for the Americans.
Karolyi briefly became the national team coordinator for USA Gymnastics women’s elite program in 1999 and incorporated a semi-centralized system that eventually turned the Americans into the sport’s gold standard. It did not come without a cost. He was pushed out after the 2000 Olympics after several athletes spoke out about his tactics.
It would not be the last time Karolyi was accused of grandstanding and pushing his athletes too far physically and mentally.
During the height of the Larry Nassar scandal in the late 2010s — when the disgraced former USA Gymnastics team doctor was effectively given a life sentence after pleading guilty to sexually assaulting gymnasts and other athletes with his hands under the guise of medical treatment — over a dozen former gymnasts came forward saying the Karolyis were part of a system that created an oppressive culture that allowed Nassar’s behavior to run unchecked for years.
Still, some of Karolyi’s most famous students were always among his staunchest defenders. When Strug got married, she and Karolyi took a photo recreating their famous scene from the 1996 Olympics, when he carried her onto the medals podium after she vaulted on a badly sprained ankle.
Despite losing his boxing match to Jake Paul, Mike Tyson in a social media post Saturday said he had “no regrets” to getting “in ring one last time.”
The boxing legend was defeated by social media star Jake Paul in a highly anticipated fight on Friday night with an age difference of over three decades between the two contenders.
Netflix said Saturday that 60 million households worldwide tuned in to watch the match. The two fighters went eight full rounds, with each round two minutes long. Paul defeated Tyson by unanimous decision and the 27-year-old upset boxer and 58-year-old former heavyweight champion hugged afterward.
Paul was expected to earn about $40 million from the fight, and Tyson was expected to take around $20 million for the fight, according to DraftKings and other online reports.
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Tyson said on his social media that “this is one of those situations when you lost but still won. I’m grateful for last night.”
The fight almost didn’t happen after Tyson experienced an ulcer flare-up while on a plane in March. He addressed his illness Saturday, writing that he “almost died in June.” He said he had eight blood transfusions and “lost half my blood and 25lbs in hospital and had to fight to get healthy to fight so I won.”
Tyson retired from boxing in 2005 after a 20-year career. He last fought in a 2020 exhibition match against former four-division world champ Roy Jones Jr.
“To have my children see me stand toe to toe and finish 8 rounds with a talented fighter half my age in front of a packed Dallas Cowboy stadium is an experience that no man has the right to ask for. Thank you,” he said.
Alex Sundby and
contributed to this report.
