Halsey / Sing 2 (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) / 2021
Could Have Been Me
defiant, restless, propulsive
An anthem of impatience with a safe, regret-avoidant life, built for a kids'-movie soundtrack but carrying an adult urgency about risk and self-actualization. The song repeats a single fear -- dying with your potential unused -- until it becomes a mantra rather than an argument.
carpe diem urgency fear of regret rejection of complacency risk versus safety self-determination
Who's speaking
A first-person narrator addresses an unnamed 'you' who represents caution, regret, or a life half-lived; the narrator is declaring independence from that mindset rather than describing a real dialogue partner.
What happens
The song doesn't develop a plot so much as escalate a declaration. It opens by rejecting invisibility and smallness, moves through impatience with mundane obligation, and circles back repeatedly to the same refusal to let life pass unlived, ending on the same warning phrase repeated until it functions as a closing mantra.
How it's built
Built on short, punchy verses that feed quickly into an insistent, list-like chorus. There's no real bridge or tonal pivot -- instead the song intensifies through repetition, stripping lines down further each time (full couplets collapsing into single repeated phrases) until the final refrain is almost chant-like.
Section by section
Opening verse
“blaze of glory”
The song sets its stakes immediately by rejecting a quiet, unremembered life in favor of something loud and consequential, even self-destructive. The martial image of fleeing danger that follows reframes ordinary existence as something to survive rather than drift through.
Pre-chorus
Here the addressee's caution is cast as something constraining and almost shameful -- effort spent protecting oneself from life is reframed as effort wasted. This sets up the chorus's opposite instinct: embracing experience rather than guarding against it.
Chorus
The chorus works as an inventory of wants and refusals rather than a narrative. Pairing opposite emotional states together suggests the narrator wants full range of experience, not just pleasant outcomes, which is the song's clearest articulation of its theme.
Second verse
The mundane complaint about ordinary work and weekly routine lowers the stakes from abstract heroism to relatable tedium, which widens the song's appeal -- the enemy isn't fate or death, it's dull obligation.
Outro
“it could have been me”
The closing section strips the song down to its central warning, repeated until it loses conversational meaning and becomes pure incantation. This repetition mimics the anxious looping of regret itself.
Craft
- anaphora
- The repeated 'I wanna' and 'I don't wanna' constructions stack desires and refusals back to back, creating momentum and a sense of a list being checked off rather than a story being told.
- personification of regret
- Regret is treated as something a person can be physically wrapped in, turning an abstract emotional state into a confining garment the narrator is trying to shed.
- imagined retrospective speech
- The recurring warning phrase is framed as something the narrator refuses to say about their own life, functioning like a quoted fear from an imagined future self looking back with regret.
Reading it
Most straightforwardly, this is a motivational pop anthem about refusing a passive life, fitting its placement in an animated film about performers chasing their shot. A secondary reading hears the 'you' as an internalized, more cautious version of the self -- the song as an argument the narrator is having with their own fear rather than with another person. Both readings coexist comfortably given the lyric's vagueness about who exactly is being addressed.
Context
Written for the Sing 2 soundtrack, the song's function is partly promotional and tonal -- it needs to energize a family-friendly film about performers risking everything for a dream, which shapes its broad, slogan-like lyrics rather than personal narrative detail. I don't have reliable information about the specific writing or production credits beyond Halsey's performance.
Listen for
- the way vocal delivery hardens on the repeated refusal lines, building aggression without changing the words
- how the chorus strips to single repeated phrases by the song's end, mirroring lyrical minimalism with structural repetition
- the contrast between the grand 'blaze of glory' opening and the mundane complaint about weekday mornings
- the rhythmic, chant-like insistence of the closing repeated warning phrase
About Halsey
Ashley Nicolette Frangipane, known professionally as Halsey, is an American singer-songwriter and actress. Noted for her distinctive singing voice, she has received numerous accolades, including three Billboard Music Awards, a Billboard Women in Music Award, and an American Music Award, as well as nominations for three Grammy Awards.
b. 1994 / United States
Full biography and catalogue