Marina Diamandis and pop music as a political tool— “You know you’re only known ‘cause of your sex chromosome”
“A quote that I used on my Myspace biography, when I was starting out, was: “i’m an indie artist with pop goals”, and what I meant by that was that I was acknowledging that I was going to be working within an industry whilst not becoming part of it. So from the start I was very clear about the fact that I was being strategic in using pop music as a medium to express my own views”, exposed Marina Diamandis at a talk with Oxford Union three years ago.
Marina, until a year ago identified with the stage name of Marina and the Diamonds, is a thirty-three-year-old British artist. Half Greek and half Welsh. At the age of eighteen she moved to London and at nineteen she learnt how to play the keyboard, first instrument she started her career with. She began by recording herself in a homemade way, spread her music on Myspace and her first EP, Mermaid VS Sailor (2007), was produced manually by her own. Then, she sent it to other people and charged them through PayPal.
Marina had no musical background. She had never played in front of anyone, she had never written a song. During her artistic beginnings, she was diagnosed with synesthesia, the ability to associate sounds with colors, and the fact that her voice is mezzosoprano. With this came also the disparagement she received from her singing teachers for having a slightly more complex and unusual voice in women, and that, however, allows her an agile passage from treble to bass.
The reason why she decided to enter in the music industry was because she felt she had a lot of things to say. From the beginning, that was her vision of music: a space, a way to communicate.
The genre that Marina is dedicated to is indie-pop (independent pop). Pop music originated during 1950 and includes all those songs that are a trending at a specific moment in time and, therefore, respond to the popular culture of each region. They are melodies of medium or short duration, with a very basic musical composition, and highlighted by the repetitions of the choruses.
She recognizes that, on its surface pop music is conceived as a “light and silly, sometimes frivolous and superficial” entertainment and even agrees. However, she says that it is also a way to document social history.
“I wanted to make pop music not because not for its sound, but because I saw it as a really clever tool that I could use to express unorthodox ideas to a really large audience.”
About her creative process, Marina stands out the connection between writing songs and telling stories. “Something that I’ve always been obsessed with is the idea of zeitgeist something that is defining the spirit or mood of our times and I feel like pop music has been a perfect tool to capture and communicate that”, and makes an alogy between music and a mirror that serves to reflect the time in which we are living:
“If you ever wanna find out something about this moment in time in any kind of society or culture you look to its popular art, (that could be fashion, film, theater, architecture) and you can get a really good gauge for that attitudes inherent in that culture, as attitudes from a culture towards women, race, sexuality, religion… So for me it’s not just something that’s light entertainment, it’s something that encapsulates and communicates a very specific period in time.”
Although Marina hates covering other artists songs, she also finds in it a space to express her own vissions of the world. When she has to make a cover, she chooses the songs with suspicion.
In 2009, she made an acoustic version of What You Waiting For?, by Gwen Stefani. While analyzing the lyrics, the complaint is very clear: the objetification, underestimation and hypersexualisation of female artists in the music industry.
“Like a new cut pattern, you’re repeating yourself // You know it all by heart, why are you standing in one place? // Born to blossom, bloom to perish// You know you’re only known ’cause of your sex chromosome // I know it’s so messed up how our society all thinks // Life is short, you’re capable”
A year later, she covered Starstrukk, by 3OH!3. “I decided to cover Starstrukk, by 3OH!3, because I wanted to demonstrate how a pop song that is deemed to be quite light as the song that it is, is a very clever piece of pop songwriting. And by stripping it down, I kind of made in something quite pure and interpreted the lyrics very differently because I’m a woman singing it and they are two young guys who like to party a lot.”
Besides that the original version has a more accelerated rythm, composed to be danced rather than to be contemplated from depth, the lyrics of the original song seem to expose a much more banal message: two guys at a party trying to have sex with a girl. Even short skirts stand out as an infallible mean of women when it comes to attracting men. Marina reversed it and took a completely different turn. Among the comments on Youtube, they all agree: “It’s the same lyrics, but it sounds so much deep. Marina managed to turn this into some beautiful, deep tragedy about love and sexual relationships.”
Analysis, criticism and social denunciation are three key components to lyrically understand Marina’s works. Topics such as feminism, power relations, family, human nature and cultural constructions. Marina highlights women’s role in society in songs as Dirty Sheets, and expresses: “Female guilt is a fast swimmer”
Sex Yeah, a song from her second official album, Electra Heart (2012), comes from a criticism to hypersexualization of women.
“ If women were religiously recognized sexually, we wouldn’t have to feel the need to show our ass-ets to feel free // Been there, done that, got the t-shirt // Sold my soul and yeah the truth hurts // Tired image of a star acting naughtier than we really are”
The axis of Electra Heart is female identity. It’s a character divised by Marina to question the stereotypical figure of the average young woman from American culture. It represents the crisis of identity during adolescence, the contradictions, the way in which the system pushes us to want to sell an image of how we want to be seen, the existential anguish of our generation and the power relations in sex-affective bonds. This last one stands out in Power and Control, which poses romantic love as “an eternal game of tug and war”, where both parts struggle for not to be dominated by the other: “Women and men, we are the same // But love will always be a game // A human vulnerability doesn’t mean that I am weak”
Marina talks a lot about this inevitable exposure to vulnerability in affective bonds and, consequently, our defense mechanisms to face the world. Another example is in Fear and Loathing: “Now I see, I see it for the first time // There is no crime in being kind // Not everyone is out to screw you over // Maybe and just maybe they just want to get to know you” .
On her third album, Froot (2015) Marina maintains those existential questions from a more specific approach: “How does human nature work?”. In Savages she asks herself where does the violence come from. She mentions wars, rapes. Is it a learned behavior or does it come in our DNA? “Underneath it all, we’re just savages // Hidden behind shirts, ties and marriages // How could we expect anything at all // We’re just animals, still learning how to crawl”
On Immortal, she exposes our human desire for eternity, to leave a trace of security and belonging: “That’s what we do it for, to reserve a place // It’s just another part of the human race // that’s what we do it for, to reserve a space // In history, it’s just part of the human race // I’m forever chasing after time, but everybody dies, dies // If I could buy forever at a price I would buy it twice, twice // But if the earth ends in fire and the seas are frozen in time // There’ll be just one survivor, the memory that I was yours and you were mine”
Above it all, Marina puts the spotlight on the freedom of discourse and individual thought, and thinks that the music industry today does not encourage artists to take risks, especially in this musical genre.
