Marina and The Diamonds

When my friends tell me how much they love and idolize Demi, Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, and the like I try to jump in with my one and only pop obsession: Marina and the Diamonds. The usual response I get is, “who?” Followed by a return of discussion to the more easily recognized pop heroines of the day. These friends gush to me about how Demi is saving the world, Tay is giving voice to our broken hearts, and Bey is just queen of everything. And while I completely respect these pop heroines for using their voices to reach people like my wonderful friends, there is something missing from their vein of pop for me, something that no one provides better than Marina and the Diamonds.

Marina began playing the piano and putting her poetry to music when she was 20 years old, which is a pretty late start for someone in the pop world. The first video I ever saw of Marina’s was “How to be a Heartbreaker” from her 2012 album Electra Heart. My first reaction was that this was yet another fluffy pop song jumping aboard the modern trend of gender role reversal in music videos. I thought it was cute, but didn’t connect with any substantive message in it at first. However, something kept me coming back to it and I watched it three more times that day.

Fast forward to a couple weeks later. After making it through the entire Electra Heart music video series (yes, she did this before Bey), I was totally swept by her unique voice and poetic lyrics. The way that she uses the pop medium to expose a variety of multifaceted issues on gender and culture results in songs that are both extremely catchy as well as layered in symbolism and deep thought.

The song that broke my ambivalence toward Marina is called Primadonna. Like many of her songs, this song is full of wit, irony, humor, and depth – not a very easy thing to pull off. She artfully balances mocking the “prima donna” female trope with an explicit acknowledgement of the fact that we all have a little prima donna in us. This theme is reflected in her song Homewrecker, but this is just one side of her work. She is entirely unafraid to expose a much more raw and emotionally charged side of herself in songs like Teen Idle and Lies.

I could list, analyze, and gush about the Marina songs I love (aka all of them) all day, but beside her artistry in writing and crafting her songs and videos, she has amazing talent that is not to be overlooked. I love Rihanna, she’s so bold and eccentric, but when she gets on stage to sing, she exposes how artificial and produced her tracks are. Marina, on the other hand, has amazing control of her voice. She moves seamlessly from beautiful high notes to a smooth (or sometimes raspy, if she so chooses) deep low notes.

I see how long this post is getting, but I genuinely feel that even this does not do her justice. In her music, she advocates for women’s rights, a deeper thinking culture, and a more intellectual breed of pop in a wonderfully poetic way. The best part is, she really does have the world talking. Instead of the usual heap of trolling and superficial commentary, her videos receive comments discussing and opening up the songs to the many possibilities of meaning, almost in the same way one would for a piece of literary criticism. Her work is sparking an highly intellectual and interpretive discussion about culture and art.

I highly respect this artist and encourage you to check out her other songs, especially the acoustic versions she has released. Stay tuned for her upcoming album FROOT; she released the first track from the album earlier this month.