Three weeks ago, Halsey casually announced that she had recorded a collaboration with Justin Bieber called "The Feeling" for his new album Purpose. And when Bieber released the track and its accompanying official video seemingly out of nowhere, fans and Halsey alike were taken aback. As the "New Americana" singer told MTV, "All of a sudden my phone broke, and I was like, ‘Oh, that's how it's going to be? We're just going to drop a song like that, huh, Justin?’"

Apparently she had no idea he was dropping it. But we're glad he did because "The Feeling" is a pretty great banger, balancing slow-burning verses with an epic Halsey-led chorus.

But as Halsey also revealed to MTV, apparently she never had any intention of collaborating with another artist. She openly admits that, "I'm very, very adamant about not doing songs that I didn't write."

So what changed her mind? Well, let's just say it has a little something to do with Bieber's (possibly unintentional) reference to Alanis Morissette. As Halsey explains, "I listened to it and the version I listened to was just him singing at first and I was kind of like ‘Holy s--t, this song is amazing,’ and then it got to the pre-chorus and he said ‘jagged like a pill so hard to swallow’ and I was sold," subsequently confessing that she spent her "whole childhood listening to Alanis Morissette."

MTV notes that Halsey's fans initially hated the idea of her collaborating with Bieber, fearing that their styles were too mismatched and that the collaboration would lead to their alt-pop darling "selling out" to mainstream pop. But Halsey says she would "kind of beg to differ" because "it's 2015. Justin Bieber is cool. He's cool as hell. It's 2015. I don't think that's the case at all, and I'm honored to be part of it."

Despite her initial reservations about collaboration, Halsey maintains that hers with Bieber didn't "[compromise] any sort of integrity" because Skrillex made "sure it was equally [her] style as it was Justin's." She recognizes that the collaboration did seem to come "out of nowhere" and could appear as if she were "making this breach into the mainstream," but at the end of the day she still proudly calls herself "an alternative artist."

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