Marina and the Diamonds - Pop and other complications

Looking for a Way

Blessed with an extraordinary voice, repeatedly compared to Kate Bush, PJ Harvey and Cyndi Lauper, Marina Lambrini Diamandis, aka Marina And The Diamonds, earned her rightful place in the pop world within little more than five years, alternating between irresistible, mocking and occasionally rather tacky hits and exquisitely refined ballads.

Born in Abergavenny, Wales, to a Greek father and a Welsh mother who separated when she was four, Marina grew up in Monmouthshire, where she attended an all-girls college. At fourteen she decided she would become a singer, drawn into a "world of fantasies" by the success of her childhood idol, Britney Spears, who at the time was at the peak of her career, and by reading biographies of major pop stars like Madonna. Thanks to the naivety of youth and the raw ambition that characterized her early on - and that she would later reproach herself for - young Marina became convinced that she too would make it.

So, after spending two years in Greece - where she earned her International Baccalaureate diploma and set out to explore her roots and the local popular music - at eighteen Marina returned to Britain and moved to London, where she first enrolled in a dance school and then at university, taking a course in classical composition, but dropped out of both after two months.

A little discouraged, but still set on joining a band, Diamandis threw herself headlong into auditions, including one held by Virgin for a reggae boyband, which she showed up to disguised as a boy. But this isn't one of those charming anecdotes where the protagonist, thanks to a creative, bizarre and seemingly rather ridiculous flash of inspiration and sheer stubbornness, actually pulls it off. In fact, she was stopped at the gates by security. A week later she got a call from Virgin. "They were probably just curious to see what kind of weirdo I was" - the singer later revealed, having blown that chance by turning up with a timid rendition of a Whitney Houston song. The producers' curiosity faded immediately. That episode marked the start of a difficult period for the young Welsh singer, overwhelmed by deep disillusionment that also led her into a fierce conflict with her own body - a struggle traceable above all in unreleased songs like "Supermodel's Legs" and "Silver Walls".

The Jewels Era

But that would also be the very thing that gave her the right push to get back in the game. So Marina stopped going to auditions and began writing and composing her own songs at the piano, after adopting, in 2005, the stage name "Marina And The Diamonds", where the "diamonds" refer to her fans. "I simply imagined a group of people who share the same heart. A space for like-minded people who feel hemmed in by a pre-packaged standard of living." What's more, according to the singer-songwriter, choosing this name was also a way of fighting loneliness, "a warm, nice idea, that doesn't sound as self-centred as Marina Diamandis".

Determined to make it, she released her first EP, Mermaid vs Sailor, in 2007, on her MySpace profile. The backbone of this debut is the theatrical spirit running through every song, from the first version of "Seventeen", for which the singer's first-ever video would later be made, to the early, still rough sketches of the excellent "Hermit The Frog" and "Simplify", a delicate ode to simplicity that recalls the elegant piano-pop of Tori Amos, even if it already contains a good deal of what would become the trademark of Marina's first era - the "jewels" era - albeit without fully committing to it.

Then there's "Plastic Rainbow", the very first song Diamandis ever wrote, at nineteen or twenty, a track that sparked her desire to become a songwriter, forever changing her approach to music, which until then had been merely driven by ambition. It's therefore impossible not to notice the incredible charisma and genuineness of this very first effort (now virtually impossible to find on CD), despite the homemade recording, the far-from-perfect vocals and the sense of vulnerability that shines through.

In 2009 Marina took a small step forward, managing to release the EP The Crown Jewels on the label "Neon Gold Records", which marked the first appearance of the ecstatic "I Am Not A Robot", a future signature song for the singer-songwriter. A song that, on its own, considerably raises the quality bar of her early output. In short, there are several signs pointing to an interesting future. And so, the following year, Marina released her third EP, The American Jewels Ep, the forerunner to her debut album, "The Family Jewels", released on Atlantic Records and preceded by the singles "Mowgli's Road" and "Obsessions". The latter is said to be a favourite of Chris Martin of Coldplay, whose European tour Marina would open a couple of years later. But let's take things in order.

If we were to judge it by its atrociously photoshopped cover, we wouldn't even give The Family Jewels a chance. Instead, we're faced with a surprising album, capable of calling into question the conventions of pop music in recent years, both in terms of the themes it tackles - always with a personal, sharp and biting touch - and in terms of musical exploration and experimentation, confirmed above all by the genre-pastiche of the closing track, "Guilty".

It's hard to find a point of comparison for a record that blends quality indie-pop with jolts of new wave; most critics, in fact, have put forward the rather lazy comparison with Lily Allen, who, in light of the facts, has little or nothing to do with the Welsh singer-songwriter. The sounds are different, the mood of the songs is different. The voices are different. Diamandis's is powerful, acrobatic and incredibly expressive, capable of bringing to life what we might call true "expressive onomatopoeias", aided by small rhetorical devices scattered throughout the songs, and also creating a genuine correspondence between what is being sung and how it's sung. So we hear her float, humble and vibrant, as she laments the "Obsessions" weighing on our daily lives, and turn almost ape-like and cartoonish to the rhythm of "Mowgli's Road".

And then, occasionally getting her hands dirty with electronic sounds dredged up from the '80s (the mockery of "Shampain"), Marina guides us through a grotesque portrait of a frivolous, moody America - a theme that would return in force on her sophomore effort, Electra Heart - poking fun at the caricature-like characters in her songs ("Hollywood"), as well as at herself ("Oh No!").

The most fitting comparison might be with the songwriting of Regina Spektor, with whom the Marina of the Jewels Era shares a knack for creating light-and-shade contrasts, as well as vocal flourishes and piano-based composition - but where Spektor is more refined, classical and rooted in the Tori Amos tradition, Marina's sound is distinctly more energetic and varied, and also rougher around the edges, if you will. And there's no guarantee that Diamandis fans like Regina Spektor, or vice versa.

To understand just how original the expressive vitality of early Marina truly is, it's worth listening to the tracks that didn't make it onto her debut, such as "Sinful", inspired by the pain of suicide as seen through Christian eyes, and the cover of Gary Numan-esque "Space And The Woods" by Late Of The Pier, actually a B-side of "Mowgli's Road", on which she explodes with unexpected punk-rock energy (we'll later discover her admiration for Johnny Rotten and, above all, Brody Dalle, whose scratchy voice she tries to borrow).

There's an entire album of the singer's demos from this period: it's called "Give Me The Money!" and was never officially released, but rather leaked online by a fan. It deserves a mention just for its opening track, "Starlight," one of the Welsh songwriter's finest songs, and for the cover of "Perfect Stranger" by Katy B and The Magnetic Man. Marina literally strips the song of its syncopated drum'n'bass rhythm that defines the original and reinvents it, giving it a new face that is poignant, deep, powerful. And if that surprises you, try listening to her version of "Boyfriend" by Justin Bieber, which she performed on Bbc Radio 1 in April 2012!

The Gems era is thus a fruitful period for Diamandis, during which she finally seems to find a balance and her own artistic path, despite initial technical shortcomings, especially at the piano.

The Electra Heart Era

In the summer of 2011, Diamandis was called upon, alongside Robyn, to open for Katy Perry's "California Dreams Tour," an experience that would certainly prove formative. About a year later, preceded by various singles, she released her second record, the concept album Electra Heart, whose protagonist embodies various stereotypes of the modern American woman, interpreted through a cinematic lens. But Electra is also the antithesis of everything Marina has always believed in, an ideological construct, a story to tell: the corrupted side of the American dream. In short, pure fiction. Like pop music itself. And to best play the part, Marina also physically transforms into the character: her black hair is covered by a blonde wig, for a totally plastic, unnatural effect, and a little black heart appears on her cheek, the symbol of Electra Heart. Her look becomes more constructed, softer and more feminine, decidedly girly, at times vintage, and Marina's soft, curvy body starts being put on display.

"My biggest fear, which I think is everyone's fear, is losing myself and becoming an empty person. And it's easy for that to happen when you're very ambitious," the songwriter says in presenting her creation, Electra Heart, a bleak, ambiguous reflection of everything Marina Diamandis has chosen not to be. Listening to the album, however, one repeatedly gets the impression that the songwriter has slipped a little too deeply into Electra's shoes, and in tracks like "Teen Idle" and the falsely joyful "The State Of Dreaming" — where the ghost of Kate Bush makes an appearance — the line between person and character feels noticeably thinner. Add to this the fact that she opened for Katy Perry, one of the most famous and most vacuous popstars of our time, and the controversy is served on a silver platter: longtime fans start wondering who the real Marina is — the girl-next-door of "I Am Not A Robot," or the one with the blonde wig and little heart on her cheek from "Primadonna". And where exactly, if it even exists, is the dividing line separating Electra from her creator.

On the other hand, it's also true that Diamandis has never hidden her passion for pop music (even though she's said she makes a distinction between popstars and pop artists), nor her morbid yet reticent fascination with the American dream. Make no mistake, Marina is well aware that it's merely a seductive illusion, and as we know, she had already used self-irony before to poke fun at this very weakness of hers.

On "Electra Heart" she doesn't celebrate the glamorous side of America, as Perry does, more or less unconsciously, but instead uses the American illusion — seen through the eyes of a non-American — as a "historical" backdrop to tell stories of failure, downfall, loneliness and alienation. Everything seems written like the screenplay of a film, or better yet, of a modern melodrama — the very name Electra already evokes Greek tragedy — steeped in a deliberately kitsch sound. And the result, however uneven, marks the dividing line between a popstar (Katy Perry) and a pop artist (Diamandis).

The Welsh songwriter hasn't changed herself in making this record, she has simply transfigured into a sort of alter ego; what really makes the difference is the production, courtesy of renowned studio gurus like Liam Howe, Greg Kurstin, Dr. Luke, Diplo and Stargate. And it's thanks to their touch that the slightly indie, slightly new-wave attitude of early Marina is here sublimated into commercially-minded electro-pop. But once stripped of this overblown, trendy production, most of the songs turn out to be perfectly consistent with the pop archaeology of Marina And The Diamonds. Indeed, the songs have often been reworked in acoustic versions live; so "Teen Idle" becomes a heartfelt, intimate piano confession, "How To Be A Heartbreaker" loses its mischievous soul and dons melancholic fragility, revealing its narrative nature, while "Starring Role" leaves listeners stunned by the vivid, emotional performance it offers.

Few songs on Electra Heart, then, were born purely from Electra's own forceful, energetic heart. Among them are certainly "Bubblegum Bitch," a genuine introduction to the character and her contradictions, and "Radioactive," written by Marina drawing inspiration from the sparkling, dazzling atmosphere of New York. Then there are the driving singles that pushed the album to the top of charts around the world: "Primadonna," where her voice brushes against operatic territory, already giving us a taste of how remarkably Marina's vocal technique has improved, "Power And Control," co-written with Steve Angello of Swedish House Mafia, riding a dance-club mood, and finally the aforementioned "How To Be An Heartbreaker," which ties back to the former, its ironic edge clearly on display.

The standard version of "Electra Heart" closes with one of the most seductive, elegant songs of this era, "Fear And Loathing," while the deluxe edition, despite only adding a few extra tracks, starts to feel a bit too weighed down by the aforementioned bombastic, crowd-pleasing production. But that's Electra Heart for you, take it or leave it. And it's precisely with Electra's blonde wig that Marina will achieve widespread mainstream success. Helping her, besides the pop appeal of the character and the singles — backed by well-made music videos — will also be the fact that she's called to open Mylo Xyloto Tour" for Coldplay, a great opportunity to get noticed.

But this phase too is not destined to last. Even though Electra Heart, with all her contradictions, weaknesses and inconsistencies, has won over countless fans, and by now most people tend to identify Marina with her alter ego, the songwriter decides it's time to move on. "It was fun while it lasted" — her own words, but Marina repeatedly lets slip the bitterness, mixed with awareness, that the Electra Heart experience left her with: being a popstar, even as fiction, just isn't for her. Because people tend to pigeonhole you in a certain way if you're a popstar, assuming you're incapable of creating your own music, that you're just a puppet in other people's hands, with no style and no personality of your own.

Before killing off her bold alter ego, Marina has time to duet with a rising young popstar, Britain's new next big thing. She is Charli XCX, who at the time, May 2013, had just released her debut album, "True Romance," and few people knew who she was yet, despite the massive success of "I Love It," sung by Icona Pop but written by Charli herself.

The song Diamandis writes for the occasion, tailored perfectly to fit young Charli, who at the time was clearly influenced by Marina, much as Melanie Martinez is today, plays on one of Marina's usual wordplay tricks, with the title "Just Desserts" standing in for "justice hurts". In the track, however, it's sometimes hard to tell who's singing which part. Perhaps more due to a homogenizing autotune effect than any inability on their part to carve out a distinctive tone. Their vocal timbres are in fact very similar, but Diamandis's extra eight years and far greater experience show through, not to mention that her voice is much deeper and more malleable than Charli's, which, though more immature, is still thoroughly enjoyable and offers a tasty preview of her own versatility here. The track, Marina's first collaboration with another artist, was released on SoundCloud and YouTube.

The Fruits Era

In May 2014, Marina released a music video on her YouTube channel titled "Electra Heart," symbolically marking the end of her most prolific and complex artistic era. That same year, in fact, she set to work on a new album, with very clear ideas about how it should sound. While Electra Heart had brought together some of the mainstream scene's biggest producers, Marina now had in mind an organic, cohesive atmosphere for her new record, and producer David Kosten would help her achieve it.

In November 2014, promotion began for the new album, FROOT. The media strategy was simple but effective: release a single with an accompanying video every month until the album's release, originally slated for April but then brought forward to March 10th due to leaks. So far, so great: the singles followed one another, month after month, tasty and interesting, with the exception of the forgettable "Forget" and "Blue", and everything suggested that Diamandis had gone back to her roots, to the artistic honesty and pop extravagance of the Family Jewels era.

But disappointment wasn't long in coming: while the best tracks were burned through as singles (from the freshness of "Froot" to the hopeful melancholy of "Happy", gorgeous in the acoustic live version posted on the singer's YouTube channel, to the closing dark, pensive refinement of "Immortal"), the rest of the songs end up sounding all alike, flattened by a production that fails to showcase Diamandis's still-excellent voice — here, however, lacking bite because it's perpetually chasing either a forced dreaminess or the highest note ("Weeds"). That multifaceted, charismatic vocal style that made Marina's performances so captivating and, above all, unmistakable, seems to have vanished into thin air.

Even her powerful knack for songwriting has flattened out, if we set aside the few gems mentioned above and "Savages", which quietly echoes the singer's debut. But that's only a brief, quiet glimmer. Vivid, ironic and eccentric tracks like "Oh No!", "Hollywood" and "Guilty" have never felt so far away.

And no amount of undeniable meticulousness poured into producing and promoting this record will save FROOT from a listless, navel-gazing streak that bores the listener, plunging them into a mood that's only superficially refined and sophisticated.

Maturity doesn't always bear the best fruit.

The Mature Album: Love + Fear

Marina Diamandis has grown up, leaving behind the indie-pop whimpers and new wave spleen of The Family Jewels as well as the now-iconic female neuroses of Electra Heart. She's also dropped "And The Diamonds" in favor of the simpler name MARINA, and picked up where "FROOT" left off in terms of sound and production. But where FROOT ended up running aground, still unripe, incomplete and entirely bent on a solipsistic stance, LOVE + FEAR manages a small, long-awaited step forward, embracing that dreaminess the singer loves so much, which here blossoms without forcing.

It should be noted that the work is actually made up of two albums, released a few weeks apart from one another, as if it were a concept album.

"Love" opens with "Handmade Heaven", also the first single, an ethereal, crystal-clear ode to life and nature, not without a touch of nostalgia stemming from the realization that building yourself a "handmade paradise", in a society that's increasingly technologically advanced and yet increasingly isolated, is no simple task. Creating one's own locus amoenus thus seems like the starting point for beginning to live again — for reconnecting with the natural world and with humanity.

These are themes that recur throughout the eight songs that make up "Love", especially in the vividly colorful "Orange Trees", inspired by the Greek island of Lefkada, birthplace of Marina's father and where the singer herself lived for a few years, and above all in "To Be Human", a delightful ballad in which Diamandis sings of her longing for connection between people, letting her pen shine (almost) like it used to (⟦Q1⟧).

Each individual track on "Love" has its own personality, so much so that there's even room for a Latin sprout alongside Clean Bandit and Luis Fonsi ("Baby"), and for the commercial detours of "Superstar" and "Enjoy Your Life". But the real surprise is "End of the Earth", thanks to a gently dark electronic arrangement that gives the song — essentially a love song — an elegant, shadowy edge, a raw emotionality perhaps even laden with fear. Then there's a final explosion that wipes away doubts and worries, soothing everything to the sound of "I love you till the end" with nothing but the power of the beauty of the simplest things.

From the second album, "Fear", one might expect a markedly darker sound design, yet the arrangements and melodies are very similar to the first disc: ranging from the angelic "Believe in Love" to "Karma", which, driven by ukulele and mandolin, best represents the new Marina, caught between feminist invectives, sticky choruses and a certain radio-friendly bent. Also worth noting is "Emotional Machine", the first song written after FROOT, and the one that, more than any other on this double album, manages — thanks to an innate eccentricity — to stand out and stick in the mind.

But not all that glitters is gold. There are at least two things that, for the second time, let the talented songwriter down. The first is the usual flat, shapeless production that softens every edge, dulls the vocal and sonic quirks, and stubbornly aims to make the tracks resemble one another, which isn't particularly hard to achieve given that the album is made up mostly of midtempo numbers.

And then there's the matter of the lyrics: as we've seen, there are certainly some decent ideas scattered here and there, but there's no shortage of missteps and clichés either, which give the album a pace that's at times a bit superficial and thin.

The verdict, then, depends on how one chooses to read it. You can view it simply as the frivolous, unpretentious record that will finally open the doors of commercial success to Marina Diamandis, or as a simple hymn to lightness and harmony, one that can be forgiven the occasional excess of ambition.

In this writer's opinion, in media stat virtus. Love + Fear marks the singer-songwriter's definitive farewell to the indie-pop universe from which she started out. The various comparisons to Regina Spektor, PJ Harvey and Fiona Apple now seem unlikely and distant; Marina, now stripped of the lively, ironic nihilism of her beginnings, shines as just one more of pop's many female starlets, while at the same time yearning for a more committed singer-songwriter path. With "Love + Fear" she fails to truly find a place on either stage, but then again, it's impossible to remain unmoved by this genuine attempt of hers to find a junction between her two souls.

The turning point and a new era: Ancient Dream In A Modern Land

Marina made it. She succeeded where her two previous albums had, partly or entirely, failed. Driven by a strong feminist ideological spirit, on Ancient Dream In A Modern Land (2021) she finally manages to condense the insolent, flamboyant attitude of her early days with her singer-songwriter ambitions.

The formula is simple, and finds its paradigm in a sort of mediation between "The Family Jewels" and "FROOT"; here and there echoes of Kate Bush and Late Of The Pier pop up, along with a kitsch taste that winks at 80s pop, cartoons and disco music. Many of the songs indeed invite you to get up and dance, starting with the breakneck title-track, moving on to "Purge The Poison", a melodramatic prophecy shaped as a dialogue with a Mother Nature who is both mocking and merciful, and "I Love You But I Love Me More", a brazen pop earworm that will delight Britney fans too.

It wouldn't be a true Marina album without a broadside against the United States: and indeed the ironic "New America", written the day after the murder of George Floyd, takes aim at white, racist America. The thoroughly enjoyable production blends synthwave flickers with electroclash sensuality, though the lyrics could truly have explored the theme with greater depth. Then there's the eco-feminist anthem "Man's World", where Marina delivers some of the album's most striking lines ("Burnt me at the stake, you thought I was a witch/ Centuries ago, now you just call me a bitch"… "You burned me at the stake, you thought I was a witch/centuries ago, today you just call me a bitch"), and the excellent "Venus Fly Trap", which sticks easily in the mind thanks to its sticky bassline and a video that cements the new Marina's new-wave aesthetic, drawing on 80s horror films and, more broadly, that "future nostalgia" that Dua Lipa has by now legitimized even in mainstream pop.

But Ancient Dream In A Modern Land also makes room for contemplative ballads, like "Flowers", which harks back to "Buy The Stars" and thus to the thriving Electra Heart era, and the bittersweet "Goodbye", which closes the album amid stop-and-go dynamics, chanteuse-like trills and faint nods to the pianistic pop of Fiona Apple. Both tracks, like "Pandora's Box", offer interesting ideas but, like the ballads on the previous record, end up overproduced.

"High Emotional People" works better. Partly because of the lyrics, in which Marina sings, with great clear-sightedness, about depression and emotional turmoil (“People say men don’t cry/ It’s so much easier to just lie/ ‘Til somebody takes their life/ Emotions are a part of our design”… “La gente dice che gli uomini non piangono/ È molto più facile mentire/ finché qualcuno non si toglie la vita. Le emozioni sono parte del nostro design”), and partly because here the production feels more respectful of the singer's vocals, allowing itself, toward the song's finale, a lush, overflowing, sumptuous texture.

On Ancient Dream In A Modern Land Marina steeps the current issues she's always cared about (defense of minorities and climate change above all) in kitsch aesthetics and alluring hedonism, finally going back to playing a bit with melody, image and meter. Although some lyrics remain too didactic and the album's tracklist lacks balance between its livelier songs and its ballads, we can say that a new, flourishing era is opening up here for the Welsh singer.

Ride the wave of great music

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