What is the concept behind the album's title and what does it mean to you?
Badlands spawned out of my fascination with the concept of isolation in hotel rooms and this idea of being in a place where thousands of people have temporarily lived before you. It's such a bizarre thing because in a hotel room, there's nothing to challenge you, there's nothing to provoke you or trigger you to see who this person in front of you really is. I got so obsessed with this parallel universe, this dystopian, post-apocalyptic civilization, and I started thinking, "What do the people here look like? What do the colors look like? What's its history?"
Halfway through writing this record, it dawned on me that this entire thing was a metaphor for what's in my head. There's a booming, rotating, never sleeping city in the center of my brain and no body can come in and I can't escape. I have a strange sense of pride that my brain works that way, but I'm also terrified of what would happen if I ever tried to think in another way. That realization was really heavy for me but also strangely therapeutic in terms of coping with my own isolation and the way my life was changing.
(taken from http://www.interviewmagazine.com/music/halsey-badlands#_)