It’s been over a month since Halle Bailey shared the first peek at her upcoming solo debut. “Angel,” a piano-led pop/R&B ballad, dropped on August 4 and found the singer and Little Mermaid star flexing her vocal range. It also left fans wanting more.
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Luckily, they won’t have to wait too much longer. In a sprawling new interview with Cosmopolitan, Bailey delivered a definitive answer on when fans can expect to hear her solo debut EP in full. “Definitely before the end of the year,” she told the magazine.
[RELATED: Halle Bailey Shares Sneak Peek at First Solo Project]
Elsewhere in the conversation, Bailey talks about who she makes music for and what she wants the takeaway of the EP — her first solo musical statement not released with her sister, Chlöe — to be. “My music is definitely for the young girl who doesn’t know herself completely yet, who’s growing every day and learning about who she is and about her power,” she said. “It’s an emotional, vulnerable kind of music. It’s also a love letter to myself and my younger self and my future self.”
Even while the clock ticks on her solo release, Bailey is still having a great 2023. She stars (and sings) in Disney’s latest update of The Little Mermaid, a film that’s raked in a reported $569 million worldwide since its release in May.
That all means she’s navigating a career without her big sister just fine, though the pair are still tight. “The biggest difference is that I had to learn how to believe in myself on my own,” Bailey said. “Every time we’re working together, she’s the voice of reason, and she’s, like, the confidence for us both. She goes, ‘Keep going. Keep riding it, Halle. You’re doing great. You’re doing great.’ You know?”
[RELATED: Watch: Singer Halle Bailey Stars in Trailer for New Disney Feature ‘The Little Mermaid’]
Bailey also goes deep into her fashion and style sense and offers some perspective on what it means to make films like The Little Mermaid and Blitz Bazawule’s upcoming remake of The Color Purple (due out on Christmas) given her roots as a child star who is now coming into her own at 23.
“Ariel was my college experience. She was the one to say, ‘Look, look what you have in you. You can,'” Bailey said. “Nettie was the same type of lesson, almost in a spiritual way. These characters are speaking to me and teaching me. It’s cool to learn things about life through their eyes. And all musical inspiration really just comes from life experiences. Love has been a really big one for me too, because that’s something I’m experiencing for the first time, and it’s, like, ‘whoa’ in your brain. It’s just fireworks, a spark for creativity.”
Photo by Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic
