FEATURE:
Modern Heroines
Part Fifty-Five: MARINA
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I wanted to include MARINA…
PHOTO CREDIT: Atlantic Records
in this Modern Heroines now as her fifth studio album, Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land, was released on 11th June. I think that it is her best work yet. It has received more positive reviews than 2019’s Love + Fear. I think she has really hit a peak on the new album. You can buy it here. It is a fantastic album where MARINA proves she is one of modern music’s finest Pop artists. I have been following her career for years and feel she is going to be an icon of the future. Before coming to some interviews and a couple of reviews for Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land, it is wise to include some biograph about MARINA:
“Marina Lambrini Diamandis (/ˌdiːəˈmændɪs/; Greek: Μαρίνα-Λαμπρινή Διαμαντή; born 10 October 1985), known mononymously as Marina and previously by the stage name Marina and the Diamonds, is a Welsh singer, songwriter, musician, and record producer.
Born in Brynmawr to a Welsh mother and Greek father, Diamandis was raised in Abergavenny and moved to London as a teenager to become a professional singer, despite having little formal musical experience. In 2009, she came to prominence upon placing second in the BBC's Sound of 2010. Her debut studio album, The Family Jewels (2010), incorporated indie pop and new wave musical styles. It entered the UK Albums Chart at No. 5 and was certified gold by the British Phonographic Industry. The album's second single, "Hollywood", peaked at No. 12 on the UK Singles Chart. Her follow-up record, Electra Heart (2012), was a concept album about a character of the same name which became her first No. 1 project in the UK. The album was certified gold in the US and UK, with its singles "Primadonna" and "How to Be a Heartbreaker" becoming international hits.
Diamandis's synthpop-inspired third studio album, Froot (2015), became her third top 10 album in the UK and her first top 10 entry on the US Billboard 200, where it charted at No. 8. Produced entirely by Diamandis and David Kosten, it was praised for its cohesive sound and introspective lyrical content. In 2018, she was featured on Clean Bandit's single "Baby", which reached the top 15 in the UK. Her fourth studio album, Love + Fear, was released on 26 April 2019. The album charted at No. 5 on the UK album chart. She is set to release her fifth studio album, Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land, in June 2021”.
Rather than do a history of MARINA and her albums, there is an interview from 2019 that I want to start with. It is from DAZED. It is quite an extensive interview - though there are parts of it that I wanted to mention:
“Her work, both past and present, has always been “pop cultural” rather than straight-down-the-line pop in that sense. While chart music, the kind made by Diamandis’s conforming contemporaries, is made to slide seamlessly into the public realm ready for consumption, she was able to take the well-mined tropes of contemporary society – self-obsession, overexposed celebrity culture – and show us exactly what was so shitty about them through her songs. She was criticising the very system she naturally had to assimilate into. “I was this opinionated person who wrote my own songs, but at the same time I loved the idea of following the zeitgeist,” she says when I point out that dichotomy to her. “Sometimes, those two things don’t necessarily cross with being a pop star.”
Being something of an underdog earned Diamandis swathes of fans, who passionately respond to every one of her posts on social media. But when you’re taking a break from the pop world, little nuances – like those behind her subtle name change, for example – are something the most fervent ones don’t take note of. Sifting through her mentions, you’ll find pop stans gunning for viral fame, joking that her hiatus has lead to her becoming “poor”. “For the most part, my fans are all intelligent and nice, and it might just be the nature of being young and online, but there’s a lot of misogyny that I see – even in my own fanbase,” Marina says. She knows much of it is said in jest, but petty comments about financial status never wind up in the mentions of men taking a break, only the kind of women who fans think will work faster to appease those they don’t know.
As a result, she’s learned to step back, and only share what’s absolutely necessary with those who might love her but don’t know her IRL. “I have boundaries now,” she says. “I love and adore all support for my music, but people online don’t own me, and I won’t give them any illusion that they have any kind of entitlement.” It’s a noble stance for a pop star to make when the line between life, art, and commodity is continually blurred. “I think it’s really unhealthy to play into that, so I don’t post about my personal life online at all. Any other stuff that’s not about my music, I can just... put on a private Insta!” So, Diamandis has a finsta? She suddenly takes a keen interest in whatever's on the ceiling, before bursting into a fit of laughter. Next question.
Away from the rigid structure of the album cycle, in early 2017 she started MarinaBook: a project that saw her channel the emotion that once went into her music into blogs about her encounters with anxiety, and navigating life as an artist on hiatus. It’s interesting, I say, that her private life is off limits on Instagram, but is dissected in fine detail on that blog, one she updated sporadically before taking a step back at the end of 2017. “I think that’s why I didn’t go back to it, because it freaked me out!” she says, laughing at how nauseous the experience was for her. She sees the long-term benefits of it now, though. Dissecting the human psyche, both within her music and as a person, has always been something that has fascinated her, so much so that she decided to enrol on a psychology course at Birkbeck University in London. For a few months, if you were to wander into the school's library, you could find Marina Diamandis writing essays on modern psychology and theories of personality.
I wonder if the degree was a conscious decision for Diamandis, a curious person in professional limbo, to try and make better sense of herself or to help those around her. She claims it was both, but a course on attachment theory really struck her personally. “It helped me understand a lot of my own motives and my childhood much more.” She pauses for a sip of her now lukewarm coffee. “I’ve done a lot of therapy, and that definitely brought something new to me.”
Times have changed now, and a pop star discussing their mental health so openly is no longer such a taboo subject, but is Diamandis, who rose to fame before this transitional period in pop, comfortable with talking publicly about therapy? “I think so, because I just told you – and we just met!” she grins. “But maybe I wouldn’t have before, because I was always keeping up this perception of an artist that was so narrow. I haven’t done loads of therapy, maybe only two years of it in total, but I, like many in our generation, have had a lot of struggles with my emotional health since I was very young. Perhaps I’ve gravitated towards that subject naturally because I always wanted to solve it”.
It has been exciting charting the career of MARINA and how the music has evolved through the years. As I mentioned, I feel like she has hit a real high with her fifth studio album. Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land, is one that I would recommend to anyone.
It is interesting focusing on an interview from Vogue. Published last year, it was centred around the release of the single, Man’s World. The song was written by MARINA (Diamandis), and it brought to life by an all-female creative team. The percentages of women producing and engineering in studios was mentioned:
“Women currently make up only 2% of producers and 3% of engineers across popular music. Why do you think this industry has been so slow to recognize women behind the scenes?
In my own experience, one of the reasons I think there are so few female producers is because female artists or songwriters don’t get credit. It’s a very interesting thing that I’ve had to navigate. On the first record I got no production credits because I didn’t even think to ask for them, but the fact is that I helped shape every record and I was precious about getting each song to the shape that I wanted it. If I hadn’t been in the room, these records would’ve sounded very different.
I could see the lines getting blurred when there’s enough people in the studio throwing out ideas.
There’s such a blurred line. Obviously you’re hiring a producer, but that doesn’t mean that your contribution is nil. My experience has varied along the way because on the second record I didn’t really have a role in the production since I was working with massive pop producers. You were hiring them to give you something that you thought you couldn’t produce, which was, like, radio hits in America. Then with Froot, I tried to scale it back and coproduce with one guy. But I think a big part of it is women don’t think they have the right to ask for a credit that symbolizes or represents their contribution. It’s up to us to ask for the credit.
You said earlier that each record is sort of the opposite of the previous one. What feels different this time around?
Love + Fear was such a different record and it was highly collaborative on the songwriting front, which is what I needed at the time. At that time in my life, I just felt very unsure about everything. I was coming off two years of just feeling very depressed in ways where I started to doubt my decision-making. But I feel very different on this record. I think I’m much more confident and my life’s more balanced. I’ve made several changes in my professional life and that always translates to the art, if you have a team facilitating your ideas and helping you create what you want. I feel in control. It feels so liberating and strengthening not having to fight with your label to hash out your ideas”.
PHOTO CREDIT: Atlantic Records
I am going to finish with a playlist comprised of some of the best songs from MARINA/Marina and the Diamonds. With a gem of an album out, it is no wonder that it is being received with such acclaim and appreciation! In their review, this is what The Line of Best Fit had to say:
“A whirlwind of an opening, and also setting the tone for the albums first half, the title track is a re-actualization of Muse’s "Uprising" - sharing thunderous percussion and a sense of urgency with the former. MARINA’s voice soars across a rambunctious bass line, her angelic soprano launching into orbit as she senses the advent of a revolution. A sense of hard-earned confidence rises to the surface: the ebullience of the first track and the fruits of its introspection are echoed in the second, a sassy self-empowerment call to arms that only grows more hectic with time. “Why be a wallflower when you can be a Venus flytrap?”, MARINA ponders in jest.
Her vocal dynamism translates particularly well in rock-leaning settings, where her leaping registers make their way through enthralling kicks and mean guitar riffs. She flies across second single “Purge The Poison”, confronting turbulence with ease and getting her every word in despite the constant menace of being overthrown by an instrumental neurosis.
It’s precisely those moments of maximalism across Ancient Dreams that glue the collection of tracks together. The relentless "New America" is the hymn of a country ready to confront its demons: anthemic and critical at the same time, it pushes the idea that the social reckonings of last year should amount to more accountability and action at a systemic level. MARINA spells the end of an era of willful naivete: “America, you can’t bury the truth / It’s time to pay your dues”.
Despite a relatively short runtime two distinct albums seem to be vying for the listener’s attention: a socio-politically charged alternative pop rock epic on one side and a more tender intimate narrative following heartbreak on the other. It's the ballads of Ancient Dreams that bear the brunt of this slight schizophrenia. "Highly Emotional People" might be rooted in a specific past relationship with Clean Bandit’s Jack Patterson but it’s hard not to hear it as a broader statement about masculinity, even more so considering the track’s placement–wedged in between the intense "Purge The Poison" and "New America". There’s a disheartening simplicity in lyrics like “people say men don’t cry” that only scratch the surface of a topic that’s become a touchstone of popular culture.
But, some good comes from personal musings getting turned into grander ideas - whether intentional or not. Pandora becomes a feminist icon, reclaiming control over her own fate in "Pandora’s Box". The ancestral representative of the world’s woes transcends the misogyny of the original myth into a symbol of power and independence in MARINA’s hands. The track proves that somewhere amongst the ruins of Ancient Dreams lies a path to merging the album’s twin souls into one”.
It will be good when MARINA can take Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land to the stage – as the tracks, I feel, are designed to fully come to life in this arena. The second review for the new MARINA album comes from CLASH . They were (clearly) impressed by it:
“Now, Marina returns with her fifth studio album, ‘Ancient Dreams In A Modern Land’, a 10-track wonder that is a more mature and eclectic take on her gloriously femme and thundering electro-pop. The record opens with the carnivalesque and neo-classical: title-track ‘Ancient Dreams…’ is infused with dry, desert landscapes and sounds that are earthy and elemental. Marina attributes these colour compositions, her choice of rich magentas and blossoming greens to classical portrait artist John William Godard, a strong inspiration on the visual element of this project.
‘Venus Fly Trap’, ‘Man’s World’ and ‘I Love You But I Love Me More’ lyrically revive the Marina from the days of Electra Heart (“I’ve got the beauty, got the brains, got the power, hold the reins. I should be motherfucking crazy.”), a project that in its prime, was wildly defiant and wonderfully juvenile. At its peak is sensory ephemera ‘Purge the Poison’, with remix featuring Pussy Riot, and a heady, visual world of chains, leather and female power.
We are brought back down to earth with ‘Flowers’ and ‘Goodbye’ two ballads dominated by piano and Marina’s spiraling vocal twangs. These tracks certainly change the momentum of the record, but in a way that doesn’t feel unnatural or forced. Marina makes a strong case for embracing a change of trajectory: in life, music and art. There is something to be said for the Art Of Quitting. Or at least detaching ourselves from the things in life that no longer bring us joy”.
I am a big supporter of MARINA, and I get the feeling that she will be putting out albums of the highest calibre for many years to come. Already an icon to many, that will expand and reinforce as albums such as Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land resonates and causes ripples. It is a remarkable album that sits alongside…
THIS year’s very best.