Marina Diamandis a.k.a Marina and the Diamonds certainly hasn’t shied away from publicity grabbing image transformations. The one-time indie darling turned bleached blonde Barbie doll’s latest album Electra Heart marks a distinct departure from the quirky alt-pop offerings of her 2010 debut Family Jewels.
Just like her hair, the sound has got bigger, blonder and, like an OTT application of Elnett, it now exudes the distinct waft of commercialist over-indulgence. Having supported Coldplay and Katy Perry in the US, she is now embarking on a headline UK tour.
So what prompted this musical volte-face? Diamandis replies pensively, ‘it wasn’t a calculated change in the beginning. It started because I was obsessed with gothic pop music. I wrote a song called ‘Living Dead’, which was very synth heavy, electronic. I think that set the tone for the whole album… and also the fact that club music is so on trend at the moment.”
Electra Heart undoubtedly possesses a new-found ferocity (‘I chew you up and I spit you out/’Cause that’s what your love is all about’) while the album’s overall theme remains ‘Love. And a fear of it’ according to Diamandis. So does this signify a darker musical trajectory? “Yeah it wasn’t a conscious thing but after stepping back from the album, [there is a] paradoxical theme of having innocence and crossing it with darkness.”
Diamandis is continually flexible with her vision. Prioritising image, as opposed to the music itself, seems to be an overriding motive. When I ask her where this raw ambition comes from, she replies with characteristic frankness “I haven’t really been a music fan.
When I got to London I decided I wanted to be a pop star and I didn’t really know why, but luckily I turned out to be a good songwriter. But my desire and interest to create art definitely overshadowed my desire for fame.
“So I think your goals change over time, I don’t really know why I was driven but some people really need to express themselves, and as a pop artist you can focus that in different ways, as a performer, singer, song-writer and if you’re good at it, you can have control over the visual aspects of it as well. ‘
Certainly, Diamandis’ interest in the illusion of American pop culture and its stereotypically tacky, vacuous excesses is an overriding theme in her music to date. Perennially grappling with what it means to be a female pop star, her recent image change coincides rather neatly with this self-conscious attempt to challenge the representation of female music artists while benefiting from the media attention that it affords.
In the creation of what the Observer’s Kitty Empire termed ‘ironic distance’, Marina has played off her newly-contrived image of a sexed-up prima donna, while simultaneously claiming to subvert the concept.
When I ask Marina about gender roles in the music industry she declares ‘You’re either a sexed-up dumb pop starlet or an artist who has integrity and depth and it seems like two can never cross. This relates to Electra Heart quite a lot, because I want that pop model to make my music reach a wider audience, but also write songs that actually have meaning.’
On the motif of American pop culture, which underpins both albums, Diamandis adds ‘on the first album I explored it briefly, in one or two songs but I didn’t develop the concept that much… [Electra Heart is] definitely about that theme of vacuousness and why that’s an issue in American pop culture; it offers you that notion of escapism.’
But dressing up unabashed chart-friendliness in pseudo-intellectualism just fails to elevate what smacks of commercial sell-out. Diamandis may have binged on the candy of short term notoriety, but by veering so wildly from her quirky origins the sugar-low is surely lurking around the corner.
