· Alex Harris · Trending
Halsey Gasoline Lyrics, Meaning and Video Explained

There is a reason a decade-old track still pulls focus in 2025. The new Gasoline video arrives as a late-night broadcast from Halsey’s original mythos, a short film that reframes one of her most quoted songs with fresh heat and a sly wink at the BADLANDS era that made her a cult figure first and a pop name second.
If you came looking for Halsey Gasoline Lyrics, Meaning, and video, this is the drop that stitches all three together.
Gasoline was released on August 28, 2015, as part of the deluxe edition of BADLANDS, written by Ashley Frangipane and Peder Losnegård, with Lido on production, a taut 3:20 that helped define her early dark-pop edge.
The track has since become a cornerstone, the most streamed BADLANDS cut on Spotify and now certified triple platinum in the United States, clear proof of a song that refuses to fade into background noise.
The 2025 video answers a fan wish list and a marketing puzzle in one move.
Halsey directed it herself and stars alongside Teen Wolf’s Tyler Posey.
This casting is a deliberate reunion, a deep-cut callback that long-time fans will instantly recognise.
It directly nods to her 2016 Colors video, a pivotal release from her debut era that also starred Posey and helped define the rebellious, cinematic visual world of BADLANDS.
This era, launched in 2015, established Halsey’s signature dystopian dark-pop aesthetic and cultivated the dedicated fanbase that made her a cult figure.
The official upload credits confirm the cameo, and music press clocked it immediately, framing the new clip as both anniversary tribute and narrative expansion.
The timing lands inside BADLANDS’ Decade Edition cycle, where Gasoline appears again in the Anthology set, a quiet flex that shows how tightly this song still grips her catalog.
What the video does best is lean into the myth of the runaway. Reaction channels and YouTube watchers keep returning to the pink Mustang, the in-between stops for burgers and a smoothie, the sense that we’re watching a day-in-the-life chase story told in stolen moments.
That read tracks with how casual viewers are processing the clip, focusing on the charismatic outlaw performance more than plot mechanics.
It’s also where the fan conversation splits a little. On Reddit, threads around Gasoline have long debated the lyric “so you run on gasoline,” mapping it to a life lived at punishing speed, or to the masks that fame requires.
The new video doesn’t settle that debate, it just gives it a cinematic chassis.
The songwriting still hits with a first-draft sting. Halsey opens with “Are you insane like me,” a line that asks a question rather than throws a label, and later flickers “You can’t wake up,” before closing the door with “My hands are cold.”
Those three fragments tell you almost everything about the engine of the song, and they do it without neat resolution.
Gasoline is a portrait of the self built under stage lights. Across interviews and profiles, the track has been framed as Halsey writing from a place of mental turbulence and public scrutiny, a theme critics clocked early in the BADLANDS tour cycle when Gasoline became a crowd ignition point.
The Guardian called it one of the album’s harder-hitting moments in a London review, noting how the first verse practically arrives sung back to her by the room.
Billboard staff would later file it under the “fan favourite” banner.
None of this is subtle on record, but its power is tempered by a masterclass in sleek production.
Lido’s chassis of serrated synths is defined by the air he leaves between the hits, a mix by Dan Grech-Marguerat that lets Halsey’s phrasing cut without shouting.
The low-end push arrives in waves, and the vocal, shaped by Dylan William’s production, is recorded so close it feels like a confession, all polished to a sharp finish by Pete Lyman’s mastering.
This technical alchemy is why the track feels both raw and refined.
Numbers tell their own story. Wikipedia’s updated entry notes Gasoline as BADLANDS’ most streamed track on Spotify and lists a certification run that now includes 3x Platinum in the US.
That kind of late bloom for a deluxe track is rare, and it underlines why a proper visual lands now rather than then.
The video’s own rollout came with a simple promise to “celebrate the 10 year anniversary of BADLANDS,” and within days it had the kind of early traction that suggests Halsey’s core never left, they were just waiting on the signal.
A useful detour here is the wider Gasoline lineage. In 2021, a reimagined version appeared as a Target exclusive on If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power, threaded into the Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross era where Halsey pushed into harsher textures and arthouse ambition.
That tracklist choice hinted at how Gasoline functions in her universe, both as diary page and as living text that can be bent into new shapes.
If you like your analysis with receipts, the live show history helps too.
BADLANDS-era coverage across mainstream outlets captured how “Gasoline” would flip a room early, the “Are you insane like me” call turning into a wall of voices.
That detail matters, because it marks a moment where a lyric many first heard alone in headphones became a ritual line sung in public.
It also helps explain the energy in today’s reactions. One creator talks about the instrumental’s magnetism and the way the arrangement leaves space, then hits harder, while riffing on the story beats and car-as-character.
You don’t need a film school breakdown to get why it works, the clip reads fast and feels lived-in.
YouTube viewers are vibing with the texture, the cinematography and the throwback attitude, a reminder that style and story can carry a legacy single into a new cycle.
At the same time, some fans are openly asking what the 2025 visual adds beyond nostalgia and Easter eggs, especially when the song already had a second life through a reimagined version.
That tension is healthy, and Halsey leans into it instead of smoothing it out.
If art is a feedback loop, Gasoline is one of those rare loops that still feels volatile.
A song that began as a diary line is now a film clip with a steering wheel, a totem for fans who grew up with it, and a study in how an artist can revisit a page without softening it.
A song that began as a diary line is now a film clip with a steering wheel, a totem for fans who grew up with it, and a lasting study in how an artist can revisit a page without softening it.
A decade later, the chorus still doesn’t provide an answer, it provides a mirror.
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Halsey Gasoline Lyrics
Verse 1
Are you insane like me?
Been in pain like me?
Bought a hundred dollar bottle of champagne like me?
Just to pour that motherfucker down the drain like me?
Would you use your water bill to dry the stain like me?
Are you high enough without the Mary Jane like me?
Do you tear yourself apart to entertain like me?
Do the people whisper ’bout you on the train like me?
Saying that “I shouldn’t waste your pretty face” like me?
Chorus
And all the people say
“You can’t wake up, this is not a dream
You’re part of a machine, you are not a human being
With your face all made up, living on a screen
Low on self-esteem, so you run on gasoline”
Post-Chorus
(Oh, ooh oh, ooh oh, oh)
I think there’s a flaw in my code
(Oh, ooh oh, ooh oh, oh)
These voices won’t leave me alone
Well my heart is gold and my hands are cold
Verse 2
Are you deranged like me?
Are you strange like me?
Lighting matches just to swallow up the flame like me?
Do you call yourself a fucking hurricane like me?
Pointing fingers ’cause you’ll never take the blame like me?
Chorus
And all the people say
“You can’t wake up, this is not a dream
You’re part of a machine, you are not a human being
With your face all made up, living on a screen
Low on self-esteem, so you run on gasoline”
Post-Chorus
(Oh, ooh oh, ooh oh, oh)
I think there’s a flaw in my code
(Oh, ooh oh, ooh oh, oh)
These voices won’t leave me alone
Well my heart is gold and my hands are cold