MARINA Surprise-Dropped Half Her Album and It's Amazing
Ever since her rebranding and album announcement, MARINA (fka Marina and the Diamonds) has been on a musical rampage. In the past few months she has collaborated with Clean Bandit on the hit song “Baby,” released not one but FOUR singles, all of which have been a significant departure from her previous music and churned out a slew of amazing music videos. More mature and less suited for the club, Love is deeply moving and introspective. Tracks like “Superstar” and “Handmade Heaven” were personal standouts.
MARINA had originally announced that her collection Love+Fear (2 mini-albums) would be released April 27th. Considering her last set of new music was released way back in 2015, fans were highly anticipating her comeback. After one mysterious tweet and a few song teasers, however, MARINA decided to gift us all with Love three weeks early, and honestly, I was not ready.
Love’s track list; image via
The first thing you notice when you listen to Love is how optimistic it is. Most music seems to come from the difficult and negative aspects of artist’s inner lives, but this album is a celebration of life and love. It acknowledges all the pain we experience, and choses instead to be happy. My favourite song, which gave me cold chills during my first listen, is “To Be Human.” This track addresses the unsolvable problems we all deal with, and how this commonality should connect us.
MARINA’s lyricism on another great song, “Superstar,” shows she isn’t just here to bestow us with bops. As one lyric reads: “What I like about you is you know who you are, What you like about me is I know what I'm not,” in which she adeptly subverts our expectations about the song title and the track’s rhyming sequence. Rather than referring to herself as a superstar, which would be valid, she rejects that identity. Instead, she refers to the love of her life as her “superstar” which places the importance on love instead of fame.
Embracing love above all else is paramount on this album. “I’ll give my love I don’t care if it hurts, I’ll love you ‘til the end of the earth” is a quote from the album’s last track “End of the Earth,” and it is a powerful summary of one of the collection’s central themes: love is hard, but it is always worth fighting for.
MARINA is back so mark your calendars. Fear drops April 27th, and I have a feeling it might be some of the best pop music we’ll hear all year.
Feature Image via
