Why I love Marina and the Diamonds

It could be a lazy comparison to call Marina Britain’s Lady Gaga – talented, feisty females making wonky pop in fashion-forward attire, so what? But both “The Fame” and “The Family Jewels” heavily reference celebrity culture and display ambivalence about it. Both artists are keenly aware of the dark side of celebrity. It is a culture that is dangerous, pointless, and perhaps meaningless - as well as intriguing, irresistible and perhaps profound. While Gaga embraces on some tracks (“Just Dance”, “Boys, Boys, Boys”) the seeming vacuity of pop, Marina muses on her own desire for success and the sacrifice required (“Are you Satisfied?”, “Mowgli’s Road”, “Oh No!”), a considered version of every X Factor contestant’s blinkered determination to ‘follow their dreams’. In an industry, pop music, where success equals fame Marina is facing questions of what she should want.


When in “Hollywood” Marina sings that she’s “obsessed with the mess that’s America” she’s not just being satirical, she really means it. The line between criticism and celebration is hazy. Anyone can condemn L.A., a place with paparazzi that snap Britney being wheeled into an ambulance on her way to be committed (sectioned). It takes a sharper mind to write a song with a Warholian wonder at the hold this culture has on us. Lady Gaga goes further. For her there’s no shame in entertainment and celebrity. The pursuit of fame can go hand in hand with the pursuit of art. Pop culture is still culture. On songs like “Fashion” (‘I live to be model thin, dress me I’m your mannequin’) and “Dance in the Dark” (‘Silicone, saline, poison’) Gaga targets the fashion and beauty industries, but she doesn’t let her reservations dampen her love of fashion and beauty. In fact, they add to the experience. In her Bad Romance video she compares the music industry to forced prostitution, like a true third wave feminist her reaction is to pursue a career where she ‘prostitutes’ herself.


Marina has said that she wrote her next single (released 25th April), I Am Not a Robot, to chastise herself because her anxieties were hampering her ambitions. Knowing this, it seems like a ‘you’ve GOT to go out there and be a star’ ballad to inspire the courage to be true to oneself and try one’s best. But the lyrics are more complex than that. I personally interpret it as a love song from a woman to an emotionally-stunted macho boyfriend. He is not a robot; no need for a staid stiff upper lip, you don’t have to act like other men do, it’s ok to have emotions and opinions. Open up to me. A sentiment as beautiful and romantic as it is a critique of gender construction. One is reminded of Eva-Marie Saint’s feminine influence on Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront. Or even Blair Waldorf and Chuck Bass from Gossip Girl. The video, directed by Rankin, emphasises the theme of forgoing defences to face the world naked and alone. In a metaphorical version of Snog,Marry Avoid’s POD she appears in a variety of extreme body paint and make-up looks, as well as a natural Marina.





Marina’s “Girls” is a strange song for an artist influenced by feminism, with it’s almost misogynistic lyrics. The lyrics signify the first stirrings of realisation that something is wrong in the world of gender “I fall asleep when they speak of all the calories they eat”. First you decide that you don’t want to be like most girls “You stick to your yogurts I'll stick to my apple pie”. And then you turn your attention away from individuals and towards the expectations that they are conforming to, and you rebel against the feminine stereotype “Girls are not meant to fight dirty. Never look a day past thirty. Not gonna bend over and curtsy for you”. The Slits “Typical Girls” for the Closer Diets generation, in other words. What makes it more interesting is that one look at Marina suggests that she doesn’t routinely gorge on apple pie. She’s a beautiful, slim young woman who clearly cares about her appearance. The difference seems to be that she’s aware that other things are more important. Perhaps she also knows that nothing is less attractive than a woman who moans about her insecurities and counts calories out loud, and there’s nothing more glamorous than someone who looks sensational without apparently having to put in much effort. This is in contrast to the incredible shrinking Lady Gaga who revels in the pursuit of size zero, precisely because of how ridiculous it is. Thinking beyond the sentiment of “Girls” one hits a common problem encountered by feminists. Is the denigration of typical female interests just dismissing what is important to women? Are fashion, cosmetics and gossip actually meaningless? Is it better to be a typical man than a typical woman? This is the logic of the post-feminist embrace of the ‘girly’. Beyonce, for example, displays this resolution to the ambivalence women have about what being female means. But she does it without acknowledging the ambivalence, so that it perhaps appears to be unthinking, going with the flow of what is expected of women. Her sometimes gender-analytical and often fierce lyrics, along with her collaborations with Lady Gaga, suggest that she made a self-aware decision about her glamorous, sexy image. There are, of course, things more important than looking good, but appearances are important. For they are art.


Marina and the Diamonds’ Family Jewels is an album of post-adolescent angst and ambivalence. It’s for people who have stopped worrying about how to fit in, and who have started about worrying about where and if they want to fit in. It is for the overwhelmed, the overinspired, who analyse and consider too much. The Fame is both a more naive and more mature album. Multi-layered, it is neither shallow pop nor is it a deep cultural analysis. It is both, and seems comfortable being so.