Marina Diamandis has always wielded time. The South Wales-born pop auteur creates and recreates dazzling new personas and styles with each album, ideas that draw from the past and envision the future, all while being firmly in the now. This journey began in an electro bubblegum wonderland under the name Marina and the Diamonds on 2010 debut The Family Jewels, and now cements her pure pop royalty on the new PRINCESS OF POWER.
Diamandis is the kind of natural that knew she was destined for the stratosphere long before she released her first song. As she explained to the Guardian in 2009, she spent her younger years hunting for auditions to get her foot in the door, with most resulting in rejection. So in 2005, she decided instead to focus on crafting her own musical experience, becoming one of the bounciest, quirkiest, most fascinating voices in pop.
Fans in the U.K. quickly embraced that energy, rocketing The Family Jewels to No. 5 on the Official Albums Chart, with 2012's followup Electra Heart reaching No. 1. International audiences caught on by 2015, as her third album, Froot, reached the Top 10 of the Billboard 200 in the U.S., and her thrilling live shows boosted her fan base around the world. Since then, she has continued to refine and reinvent her ecstatic approach to songwriting, bringing rapturous fans to the dance floor.
By 2019, she had grown so fully into herself that she decided to drop the "and the Diamonds," releasing Love + Fear as MARINA. The record's bass-heavy synths and thrumming beats accentuate the two massive emotions of the record's title in split halves, MARINA showcasing her empathetic strength. Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land followed in 2021, with MARINA presenting an even stronger vision of danceable electropop peppered with more political messages of environmentalism and equality, in addition to her intimate storytelling. Throughout it all, MARINA has exercised her impressive creative vision live as well, presenting expressive performances in captivating costumes, including the glam punk pink plaid, ruffled white skirt, and Marilyn Monroe blonde curls she sported at this year's Coachella.
From strength to strength, it's impossible to sum up the sprawling universe of MARINA, but these five tracks offer a handy road map.
This is the track that encapsulates everything we love about MARINA: her striking presentation, her dynamic enthusiasm, her fully developed characters and concepts, and her knack for inescapable hit-making. There's an obvious smirk to her delivery on "I Am Not A Robot," ingenuously channeling that universal sense of feeling detached from reality.
While the song — which first appeared on her 2009 EP The Crown Jewels — flirts with high-gloss bubblegum pop, it's the furthest thing from pastiche. "But inside, you're just a little baby, oh/ It's okay to say you've got a weak spot," she sings, the words bustling with both hedonism and self-realization — as if MARINA herself is about to leap out of the track.
"I Am Not a Robot" bubbles with an incredible depth rarely seen in mass-market pop at the time. While many others were still trying to present a polished perfection, MARINA reckons here with the need to act tough on the outside, masking your pain but still feeling it even when pushed down into the deep. Even this early in her career, MARINA immediately embraces imperfection and encourages us to embrace the same.
The rest of the record pulses with that same raw energy as well. The massive "Numb" is another fan favorite thanks to its Kate Bush push-pull piano, airy falsetto, and tender understanding of anxiety and depression, not to mention other album highlights like "Mowgli's Road," "Obsessions," "Hollywood," and "Oh No!"
The lead single to sophomore album Electra Heart, "Primadonna" builds from the strengths of other fan favorite hits like "Bubblegum B—" and "Lies" and draws listeners ever deeper into the MARINA orbit. There's her voice from the moment the song starts, cutting through the air and pulling the listener close. "All I ever wanted was the world/ I can't help that I need it all," she sings, openly proclaiming a longing she no longer needs to hide.
That openness is particularly affecting, a dominant defiance that calls into question both relationship dynamics and, well, the entire history of idol worship in pop music. "Would you get down on your knees for me?" she asks, playing on adoration, traditional proposals, sexuality. There's agony and ecstasy intertwined, the interlaced DNA that MARINA straddles so well.
MARINA has never been one to shy away from some cheeky wordplay or sex jokes, and the deliriously fun "Froot" features some of the best of both — with, of course, some danger lurking around the corner.
Over the thumping beat, MARINA dances through lines as if they were potential partners, each one bouncing between metaphors for being ready for the bedroom and the ripeness of fruit. But then, in the core of the song, there is a reminder that she's not just something to be plucked: "I'm your deadly nightshade, I'm your cherry tree/ You're my one true love, I'm your destiny."
For those that don't know, nightshade (scientific name belladonna, Italian for beautiful woman, in another layer of brilliance) and cherry trees are toxic, so beware. This track shows MARINA amping up the glitz, glam and lust, while cleverly undercutting the sweetness with just enough venom.
Just when the MARINA formula started to seem comfortable in its bubbly technicolor, the title track to Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land reinvents everything, without losing an ounce of the inescapable bouncy fun. The synth-heavy track breathlessly ratchets, riding a rhythmic pulse that's closer to the dizziness of Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavilion than to anything her pop contemporaries were doing.
And that's not to mention the lyrics, where MARINA dissects the very concept of existence: "I am not my body, not my mind or my brain/ Not my thoughts or feelings, I am not my DNA/ I am the observer, I'm a witness of life/ I live in the space between the stars and the sky." The heady existentialism lands perfectly sweetly — and that's just the chorus.
The track posits a need to embrace one's weirdest truth, to be the "eye of the storm" in this tornado we call modernity, and this is the ideal heart-racing soundtrack to that journey. That confidence builds perfectly to PRINCESS OF POWER, a record that wields refined muscly electronics and more provocative lyrics.
While today's pop stars now lean into the fascinatingly raw delivery MARINA has long channelled, she reinvents the vibe with PRINCESS OF POWER, daubing things in a heightened elegance. That surprising fusion vaults listeners directly into the pop star's sun on "CUNTISSIMO." "I'm a star, I'm a star, I'm a star/ I'll be shining wherever you are," she skewers through a thick haze of techno beat, reminding us of who she is.
MARINA is downright intoxicating as she sings about the power she has walking down the street, wielding "cuntissmo" that no-one can "dull." Arriving just ahead of PRINCESS OF POWER's release, the song immediately set the tone for an album brimming with beguiling, shuddering rhythms and lithe lyricism.
"CUNTISSIMO" quickly races into a rousing pop anthem, the kind of playfulness that makes MARINA's music suited for a dance-floor takeover. It's a call to command the sexuality women possess, an extra kick asserting her own personal strength — affirming both who she is and the heights she knows she can reach.