Album Details

• Artist: Marina And The Diamonds
• Album: Electra Heart
• Label: Elektra/ Asylum
• Year of Release: 2012
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: carlita on 2012-08-07

Media

Recently came across Welsh electronic pop star Marina (and the Diamonds) who released Electra Heart earlier this year and her Marilyn Monroe-like/ prim and proper 60's housewife image caught my attention. Changing her persona after her debut album in 2010, she now takes on a critique of a Hollywood falling starlet or Internet/reality star character; you know the type that may stumble out of clubs at 4 am with or without "knickers", and the paparazzi eager to take and sell these embarrassing moments captured on film to the highest bidder. The character that might drink hard whiskey with acerbic bite and swear like a sailor off camera, have affairs with married co-stars but can vamp when a director yells "Action".

Sounding a lot like a mix of Katy Perry, Madonna, Bjork, Enya and Annie Lennox, Marina attempts to put men in check, empowering the ladies on "Power and Control", "Bubblegum Bitch", "Starring Role" and How To Be a Heartbreaker" , channeling a techno Gwen Stefani. Getting points for pointing out the absurd in the idea of celebrity, the glamorous Jean Harlow role and putting males on "all-fours" mentally was done by Madonna with media-manipulating precision years before, clearly inspiring a generation of pop females, which is great but unfortunately there is only one original. As the influence gets passed down, the next versions become watered down and don't pack as much genre-changing impact. As Marina points out on "Sex Yeah", "nothing is provocative anymore, not even for kids, no room for imagining because everyone's seen everything". Exactly. Being a pop star singing about how ridiculous it is to be a pop star in "the valley of the dolls" is tongue- in-cheek but is living someone else's teenage dream in another's tragic kingdom.

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