Melanie Martinez: ‘Portals’
Melanie Martinez has been weaving the story of her character ‘CryBaby’ for a past decade, Melanie stated in an interview with Apple Music that this will be the last part of the trilogy. Her debut album ‘CryBaby’ which was released in the late summer of 2015, introduced the character to listeners and moved through the trials and hardships of growing up. ‘CryBaby’ has been certified double-platinum in the US as well as reentering the charts in 2020 after the song ‘Play-Date’ became a viral replayed song on Tik-Tok. Melanie’s second album ‘K-12’ dropped in the early fall of 2019, the stunning visually accompanied album had no singles drop before the initial release but still landed number 3 on the Billboard 200. The album is accompanied by a film with the same name (watch the film free on YouTube) written and directed by Melanie herself the film has over 100 million views.
On February 18th 2023, Melanie wiped her instagram of all previous posts and posted a snippet of the song, we know now as ‘DEATH’, with a short video of the tombstone-esque mushroom and the words ‘R.I.P CRYBABY’ in a heart carved into it. The next day on February 19th 2023, Melanie posted a short video with a snippet of the song we now know as ‘THE CONTORTIONIST’ with the visual as a growing biological egg. February 20th 2023 came a short video of a four-eyed pink creature along with the audio for ‘LIGHT SHOWER’. The final teaser came the next day on February 21st 2023 with a visual of an egg in what seems like a forested area and the audio snippet for ‘FAERIE SOIRÉE’. The next two days, the 22nd and the 23rd, came the announcement and the reveal of Melanie’s highly anticipated third album ‘PORTALS’.
DEATH was the first single released and the starting track for the album, the song starts off with a haunting heartbeat that suddenly stops as Melanie’s vocals start up with a description of what sounds like a wake then slowly moves to a more ethereal words such as ‘Your words mean nothing, so take ‘em back and meet me here across the plane the other side, I’m not far.’ Then moving into a more lively beat and lyrics that seem to push the fact the character of CryBaby has now passed on but is now ‘back from the dead’.
WOMB is the last song on the album but seems to be the song everyone has been overlooking. The instrumentals in this song are beautiful and compliments the lyrics written in front of them like a puzzle piece. Even though the song comes at the end of the album it describes the beginning of a new life. Melanie has said in interviews and in an instagram post that this album was mostly based off of past life regression hypnotherapy books, which would complete the life and the next life of this album.
NYMPHOLOGY/EVIL is my personal favorite song of this concept record, but I can’t talk about EVIL without first talking about the outro for NYMPHOLOGY. Melanie said in an interview with Apple Music that her partner, Verde, had a sound snippet collecting ‘digital dust’ that she wrote lyrics to complement the project called ‘Amulet’ which is now the connecting piece to EVIL. Also having to battle my own demons in the form of narcissists, Melanie describes leaving an abusive relationship where the past lover viewed her as the ‘bad guy’ for ending things, which in turn has her finally turning her back on them. Appearing in this song is also a reference to one of her first singles from ‘CryBaby’ ‘Should’ve listened to the signs and the horoscopes hope you never cope, hope you slip on soap’. The freedom that is felt from this track solidifies Melanie’s storytelling abilities as well as the flawless continuation of the tracks and how they flow together to tell the full story of CryBaby’s afterlife.
Melanie Martinez has announced a US tour starting May 30th, 2023.
PORTALS tracklist:DEATHVOIDTUNNEL VISIONFAERIE SOIRÉELIGHT SHOWERSPIDER WEBLEECHESBATTLE OF THE LARYNXTHE CONTORTIONISTMOON CYCLENYMPHOLOGYEVILWOMB
