Thinking & Writing: Electra Heart

Thinking &Writing:  Electra Heart

            Electra Heart is an album by British artist Marina Lambrini Diamandis, popularly known as Marina and the Diamonds.  All 14 tracks on the album are about destructive yet popular ideas in our modern society, and are written from the perspective of someone who accepts the damaging ideas.  The brilliance of the album is in the "cracks."

            Most of the songs are written so that at the most surface level, it sounds like she is endorsing the idea she is singing about, but if you pay attention, there are cracks in the facade.  There are moments when the underlying, hidden damage is briefly revealed.  For example, in the song Teen Idle, Marina sings in the style of a peppy cheerleader,

"I feel super, super, super! (Suicidal)"

            In Power and Control she sings,

"A human vulnerability

Doesn't mean that I am weak,

That I am weak, I am weak,

I am weak, I am weak, weak,

weak, weak, weak, weak,"

When listening casually to the song it just sounds like she is reiterating that she is not weak, but that is not what she actually keeps saying.  What she keeps saying is, "I am weak."

            Sometimes, it seems like every artist feels the need to release a song either blatantly condemning the objectification of women in media, or proudly objectifying themselves because, hey, sex sells.  Lilly Allen did the first with her shocking song Hard Out Here, and Kelis did the second with the ever so thinly veiled euphemistic track, Milkshake.  Marina is an interesting artist because she is sort of doing both, and sort of doing neither.  Her pattern of writing is that she sometimes seems to be saying one thing, but is really saying another.  That is not what a large percentage of current radio audiences are used to.

            What a large percentage of audiences are used to is songs that promote consequence-less, care-free partying.  Marina's version of that archetypal song is informed by a different track on Electra Heart.  The song is called Shampain, and contains the lyrics,

"Drinking champagne made by the angel

Who goes by the name of Glittering Gabriel

Drinking champagne made of an angel's

Tears and pain, but I feel celestial"

With the upbeat and celebratory music, it sounds like the "eat, drink, and be merry," lifestyle is being glorified, and I have seen it interpreted that way.  However, in the title, "champagne" is spelled "shampain," and without the music making everything sound great, some of the other lyrics themselves are extremely dark.

"Lay dagger dead inside a lonely bed

Trying to hide the hole inside my head

Watching the starts slide down to reach the end

The sleep is not my friend"

 Furthermore, in the music video she is wearing the same dress that she wears in the music video for Fear and Loathing, a song about suicide on the album Electra Heart.  The dress connects the two songs, telling a story about a girl who drank and partied all night, but did not feel any better when the night ended.  All these elements make it abundantly clear that Marina does not actually support that lifestyle.

            Why would Marina want to make her listeners pay attention to get some of the messages, instead of making it more straight forward?  She fills her music with contradictions because society is full of contradictions.  We receive so many messages that do not make any sense.  A feminist woman should dress and act masculinely to prove that femininity is just as good.  A woman should "embrace her own sexuality" by dressing revealingly and behaving promiscuously because then she won't be seen as a sexual object.  We do not want to make decisions about people based on race, so we ask everyone what race they are so that we make sure to let enough minorities into colleges.  The list goes on and on.

            All of these solutions just reinforce the problems in bizarre, round- about ways.  We have all heard the expression "Art imitates life."  Electra Heart is a reflection of the confused time we live in.

            We live in a time when society is realizing how flawed it has been and still is.  We are trying to fix things, and that is where all the contradictions and confusion comes from.  We want to make things better, but we do not actually know which direction to go to do that, so we end up with these inconsistent ideas.  A big part of this corrective movement is the idea that anyway you choose to live your own personal life is okay, and will make you happier than following societal "rules".  That seems like a nice sentiment, but it has created a whole lot of people who are claiming freedom from restriction, but are really just causing themselves more hurt, as is reflected in the music of Electra Heart.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vHi83LTQjU