Halsey is back with The End, an intense song about love and illness: let’s discover its lyrics and meaning.
Halsey will soon deliver a new album, the fifth of her career. She shared this latest development in this Instagram post, surprising many fans: the caption tags the Lupus Research Alliance, a non-profit organization supporting lupus research. It’s an illness that changes how you see life, which is reflected in Halsey’s music. That’s how the first single was born: The End is a song with an intense, personal meaning, and the lyrics are a door open on the singer’s state of mind.
In this article, we will analyze the song, and you’ll also find the complete lyrics at the end.
Halsey’s The End: the meaning of the lyrics
The End is a song about Halsey’s fears and feelings after discovering her new illness: in the lyrics, she talks about being in love in a moment that feels like “the end of the world,” involving biblical elements that shed light on her current beliefs.
Halsey has never hidden her health problems. She revealed she had endometriosis in 2016, and more recently, she hinted about other autoimmune diseases in her posts on social networks. In the Instagram post she published in June 2024, she mentioned lupus for the first time: lupus is an autoimmune disease for which there is no known cure. It’s generally not fatal, and most people with lupus live an average life span, but it brings many frustrating symptoms like skin ulcers, joint and muscle pain. You can watch Halsey’s post below.
Lupus is known as a disease whose symptoms “imitate” other common illnesses, so it’s usually hard to diagnose. This is reflected in the lyrics of Halsey’s The End when she describes the long, complicated path that led to the diagnosis.
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
However, The End is not just a song describing her health problems. Halsey is in love, and in this moment of psychological weakness, she wants to be held and loved like a child. Like it’s the end of the world, because this is how it feels in her mind.
If you knew it was the end of the world
Could you love me like a child?
Could you hold me in the dark?
Facing an incurable illness usually pushes us towards faith. Our spirit, our religion, gives us some answers about the universal doubts humanity has always had: what happens at the end of everything? Is there something we can save, something that can survive death? From this point of view, The End mentions some famous biblical moments, specifically the flood and the ark built by Noah, a symbol of universal death but also survival.
Once my God destroys the flesh, then there’s the flood
[…]
Maybe we could build an ark
Among faith, illness, and love, Halsey ultimately needs care. This is what she’s asking the person she loves, and this is the ultimate meaning of The End and its lyrics: stay with me in this special moment because I need you; I know, maybe it’s not the end of the world, but somehow it feels like it, and I need your presence. A song that has moved her fans for its intensity, with lines able to bring us into her mind and the pain she’s experiencing.
Read other popular song lyrics and their meaning on Auralcrave
The official streaming and the complete lyrics
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
When I met you, I thought I was damaged goods
Had a f–ed up childhood
And there’s poison in my brain and in my blood
If you knew it was the end of the world
Could you love me like a child?
Could you hold me in the dark?
If you knew it was the end of the world
Would you like to stay a while?
Would you leave when it gets hard?
So I ran into the clinic and I asked to see the man
With his white coat and his stethoscope
Like a snake around his hand
And I told him I’m not bitter ’cause I finally found a lover
Who’s better for my liver, and now I’ll finally recover
When I met him, I thought I was damaged goods
From a real bad neighborhood
So we wrestled in the mud
And I told him he could stay right where he stood
But I don’t know if he should
‘Cause once my God destroys the flesh, then there’s the flood
If you knew it was the end of the world
Could you love me like a child?
Could you hold me in the dark?
If you knew it was the end of the world
Would you like to stay a while?
Maybe we could build an ark
We could sail on broken driftwood through the sopping wet terrain
And count the buildings and the bodies getting swallowed by the rain
And in the water, there’s the doctor who didn’t listen to my claim
What a shame, he’s circling a drain
When I met you, I said I would never die
But the joke was always mine ’cause I’m racing against time
And I know it’s not the end of the world, but could you pick me up at 8?
‘Cause my treatment starts today
