Melanie Martinez is like a pop star plucked from the imagination of Dr. Seuss: The 21-year-old singer-songwriter wears oversize hair bows and a bright-colored lip, and she sometimes paints graphic teardrops on her cheeks. But there’s a complexity behind her baby doll aesthetic. Her music tells tales of drug abuse, depression, and family dysfunction through the optics of a wide-eyed teenage girl. Martinez’s debut 2015 album, Cry Baby (which is also the name of the singer’s alter ego), details the existential crises that one faces at the brink of adulthood. The lyrics are a twisted blend of childhood naïveté, teenage angst, and adult apathy, all of which are sung over creepy synths and hard-hitting hip-hop beats.

It didn’t take long for Martinez to develop her fiercely loyal fan base, which is now millions deep. Her first and only album has been certified gold, and she has plans for a second tour in the fall. All in all, she’s come a long way since she stepped into Atlantic Records’ office wearing a necklace made of doll parts and hair dyed two different colors—an aesthetic she picked up from Cruella de Vil. We spoke to pop’s greatest anomaly a day before she played Lollapalooza about fantasy versus reality and what we can expect from her sophomore album.

I had the pleasure of catching your set at Panorama. Did you get to see anyone else play?
1. I didn’t really get to see anyone play at Panorama. 2. I have really bad anxiety after I play and before I play. 3. I just need to chill out and smoke some weed or watch some cartoons. I’m not really much of a socialite when it comes to hanging out at festivals and stuff like that. But hopefully, I’ll get to see a couple of people play tomorrow [at Lollapalooza]. Kehlani is a good friend of mine. She’s playing tomorrow as well, I think at the same time as me on another stage, so I don’t know if I’ll be able to catch her set, which I’m really bummed about because she’s incredible.

A lot of artists feel nervous before a performance, but you said you feel anxious after as well. Why is that?
1. I don’t know. 2. I have anxiety all the time—like right now, during interviews. 3. I just need to chill more often, I guess. After Panorama, it was just really hot that day, so I was focused on getting into air-conditioning, really [laughs]. That was the first thought in my mind. Love (and Life) in the Time of Corona? Introducing Vogue’s New Interview Series: A-Zoom of One’s Own

You created a character for the first album named Cry Baby. How closely does this character resemble your reality?
Well, I knew for a while that I wanted to name my first album Cry Baby. I didn’t really know why. At first, I was just really into the name, and then I started thinking about it more and realized that I was called a crybaby and made fun of a lot when I was younger for being overly sensitive and emotional. Growing up, I feel like a lot of people are taught that being emotional is a weakness, and I really wanted to overcome my insecurities by feeling out of control with my emotions. I wanted to write a song that would help me deal with that, and “Cry Baby” was that song. I felt like that was me. It was just a self-description of how I’ve always felt my entire life.

Since the character is representative of you and your emotions, are the songs all based on your life as well?
I continued to write songs within the children’s theme, but also always making sure there was some sort of adult content behind everything, or an adult story or situation. There are some songs, like “Dollhouse,” “Tag, You’re It,” and “Milk and Cookies”—those songs I don’t personally connect with the actual subject. I have a great family life and my parents are super-supportive of everything that I want to do, and I’m grateful for that.

But I had a lot of friends who had issues with their families, so I’ve always loved writing songs about things that a lot of people don’t usually write about because it’s an uncomfortable subject or just depressing or whatever. To me, I think it’s really important that everyone has music that they can connect to and music that will help them. Because music is therapy for me, and I always want my music to be that for other people as well.

What’s a song you closely relate to?
“Mrs. Potato Head,” because that song is just about feeling the need to change how you look to fit a certain standard, but the idea came from the visual of a Mrs. Potato Head and how you can pull apart the pieces and change her face, and how that couples with plastic surgery. When I wrote that song, I was going through a lot of personal insecurities about how I looked, and it was a reminder that I’m beautiful the way that I am, naturally, even when I don’t feel like it. I wanted that to be the message for other women, as well, who are struggling with the same thing . . . there are still people in the world who need songs to connect to and help them with their everyday battles.

It definitely doesn’t go unnoticed. You have such an incredibly fervent fan base. Who do you think is connecting with your music?
I definitely have a good idea of who the people listening to my music is because I meet a lot of them on tour, and I’ve met people who have told me that they’ve been struggling with either depression or attempted suicide. You know, it gets really overwhelming and it’s definitely really emotional meeting people all over who are being helped by the music. They really are connecting to it in a deeper way that’s really . . . I mean, it makes me super-emotional because I know how it feels to . . . I just know a lot of the feelings that they have, so it gets me overwhelmed meeting them and sharing those kinds of feelings. It can be emotionally draining a lot of the time.

What does your average fan look like?
There are so many 13- to 18-year-old girls, but there are also a lot of older people who come with their children who also relate to the music but in a way that’s not . . . I don’t know how to explain it. There will be 8-year-olds who come to the show, and I feel like they’re super into it because of the aesthetic and the colors, or the story and the visuals, and their parents are there, and their parents might understand more of the lyrics than the kids do. So the parents can understand the more adult content behind it. That’s what they’re also interested in as well.

Looking ahead, do you think you’ll always sing as the character Cry Baby?
Cry Baby is just so close to my heart in a way that I feel so connected to the character, or like I am the character. I really want to make sure that all of my albums connect and tell a bigger story in the end. I want this to just be the beginning of Cry Baby’s story. For the next album, I can’t say what it’s called, but it’s basically done as far as the songs go. I’ve written them, but it still has to be finished being produced. The second album is about the town that Cry Baby lives in. It’s about her experience in this place from beginning to end, and it’s also introducing other characters in that place. So I can’t say what the place is, but that place is the name of the album.

You have such a profound creative vision for your work, and you’re very hands-on with every aspect. Did you ever get any pushback on this vision?
There were obviously a couple of battles in the beginning just because as a new artist on any label, it’s going to be hard, whether you have a vision or not. It’s really hard to get people to understand things so they can see that there’s truth; that people actually care about the music and the art and the story. It just took a little bit for them to realize that I’m not the type of artist who can settle for just two music videos per album.

I wanted to do a music video for every song on the album and tell the story on every song of the album, just like I do in the packaging and the visuals online. I’m just very particular about that kind of thing, so I think that they were just super-supportive from the beginning because they believed in it, and I’m really grateful for that.

Can you speak a bit more about your creativity as a child?
I was really in touch with my emotions as a kid, so I loved writing poetry just to help me get out my feelings. It was really important growing up for me to do that, and my parents were just super encouraging. And then growing up, over time, I got really into photography, and I think that’s what sparked having a need for visuals to accompany the music.

I think that came from being a photographer and thinking about fun ways to shoot my friends and have them wear really cute frilly silly outfits. I don’t know. It was fun. My parents would let me make a mess around the house just so I could create. They wouldn’t care if I ruined something if I got a good painting out of it. They were just really supportive of anything creative. I’m really grateful because I know that a lot of people don’t have that.

Do you play around with photography outside of this project, or is everything just focused on promoting Cry Baby?
Right now everything’s super-focused on the character and the story. I’m going to have so much work to do. I have three more music videos to shoot [for the current album]. I just shot a double music video for “Tag, You’re It” and “Milk and Cookies,” and I just finished editing it. It has to go through color correction and all this stuff. It might take a couple of weeks, but once I’m done putting that one out, I’m going to have those next three. I’m planning on making a music video for every song on the next record, too, so that’s going to take forever.

Looking back at your work, what makes you feel the proudest?
I feel like this is such a good question for any human who is working in any field, really. It’s so interesting, because I don’t think that anyone ever thinks about things like this, but I feel like it’s just the journey alone. Every bit of it is worth it because I get to express myself through art and music, which is crazy.

That’s my job, to express myself through art and music. I’m so lucky that I get to do this. And I’m aware that I’m very lucky to be able to do this. So every day, even if I have shitty moments and feel like I’m putting all of this work into nothing, I know in the end it’s always worth it because I get to do something that makes me genuinely so happy. When I finished the Cry Baby album, I just felt so good, because it took two years of writing and thinking about the music videos and how I feel after every single music video. It doesn’t matter if people like it or if they hate it. I got to express myself.

The article was originally published here.

Melanie Martinez took time out from her touring schedule to talk about her new album, the persona she’s created with ‘Cry Baby’, and fans who show their appreciation for musical artists in rather…

Atlantic Records Group chairman and COO Julie Greenwald say she won’t forget the day she met singer/songwriter Melanie Martinez. “She walked in and she was wearing this baby-doll dress, her hair was two different colors. She was wearing a crazy-looking necklace made from doll parts and she had made a video for her song “Dollhouse” by pulling in every favor she could get,” the executive says. “It was such an impressive commitment, and it was all her vision.”

Martinez could sing, too, as she had demonstrated as a finalist on the third season of The Voice in 2012, and Greenwald says that her “amazing voice” and well-defined “point of view” convinced her and Atlantic co-chair Craig Kallman to sign the then-teenager to the label. “We wanted to give her the resources to go out there and build a real foundation,” she says.

Now 20, Martinez, who is of Puerto Rican and Dominican descent and a native of Baldwin, N.Y., worked with the songwriter’s Kinetics & One Love, and in May 2014 released an EP called Dollhouse, which contained the title track and “Carousel.” Martinez says the latter song is about an ex-boyfriend, and, perhaps in a bit of poetic justice, was used by Ryan Murphy as a soundtrack to a trailer for American Horror Story: Freak Show. Martinez then went to work on a full-length album, Cry Baby, which was released on Aug. 14, and although “Dollhouse” and “Carousel” make repeat appearances on the full-length release, the album is a fleshed-out expression of her dark, hyper-sensitive take on the underbelly of American life. (Her point-of-view could be called Lynchian — although she tells Billboard, she has not seen David Lynch’s breakthrough film, Blue Velvet. She does watch a lot of Law & Order, however.)

While Cry Baby has its critics, the record has resonated with the record-buying public. With no radio play or national TV appearances by Martinez, Cry Baby debuted at No. 6 on the Billboard 200 chart dated Aug. 5 and currently resides at No. 26, having moved 54,000 units, according to Nielsen Music.

The singer-songwriter is currently out touring behind her new music, and her manager Ron Shapiro, who worked closely with Tori Amos and Jewel during his tenure as an executive at Atlantic, and Regina Spektor, whom he managed, says demand for tickets has been such that he is having to upgrade to larger capacity venues. Meanwhile, Greenwald says the label is taking the single “Soap” to alternative radio, where Martinez is getting some play and is in the process of looking for TV appearances and other promotional opportunities for her. Martinez took time out from her touring schedule to talk about her new album, the persona she’s created with Cry Baby, and fans who show their appreciation for musical artists in rather bizarre ways.

Have you ever seen David Lynch’s Blue Velvet?
No, I haven’t.

There’s a pretty iconic scene at the beginning of the movie where the camera opens on a beautiful, well-manicured suburb. The sun is shining and the grass is really green, and then bad stuff starts happening, the camera descends beneath the grass, and there are all these insects and creepy things slithering around. Your music struck a similar chord with me: The songs have these child-like titles and elements, but then you listen closely and the lyrics are brutally frank and really dark.
Well, thank you.

You’re 20, but your music makes you sound like you’ve lived a lot longer than that. Is that what it’s like being a young adult today?
1. I don’t know. 2. I guess. 3. I feel like, growing up, I’ve always felt things a little bit harder than most people. Working on this album has been very emotional and super personal, and creating this character Cry Baby helped me deal with my own insecurities.  I was able to throw it all on to Cry Baby instead of myself, which really helped me. It’s definitely been a process.

When you say the album is super personal, have you lived these songs?    
The song “Carousel” is about a boy that I dated. That was a personal one. And the first track on the album, “Cry Baby,” is too. Cry Baby is basically me. I’ve been called cry baby, like, my entire life, and, growing up, I thought of it as an insult. I was super insecure about it because I did take things too personally, and, in the music business you can’t be soft about things. I’ve definitely gotten better with that, but I think it’s been very hard for me because I’m very emotional. So, writing this album and creating this character, I think, was me trying to turn the words “cry baby” into a compliment.

You embraced it.
I realized that over time. Cry Baby goes through all these things, and some of the things I’ve been through, and some I’ve obviously made up because I love writing stories and making stuff up. Towards the end of the album, Cry Baby evolves into someone who’s very comfortable in her skin, and I can definitely say that I have had the same kind of change within myself. I’m a lot less insecure, and I have embraced a lot of the things that I hated about myself before.

You came of age at a time when pop music was mostly about singles, and yet, you’ve put out a collection of songs that holds together as an album. What are some of the albums that inspired you? 
I love The Idler Wheel… by Fiona Apple. It’s one of my favorites. I love every single album that Cocorosie has put out, and I love the last two albums that Ariana Grande put out. When I listen to an artist, I listen to albums. Obviously, the label’s going to push a certain single, but you don’t know if that’s what the artist really wants or what they’re trying to do with their music. It’s always important, I think, to listen to the hidden weirder tracks on the album in order to know what the artist is really about.

In the liner notes to Cry Baby, you thank “anyone who made me cry, broke my heart, made me angry, or made me feel anything at all.” As a songwriter, do you feel the need to go out there and get your heart scuffed up in order to write authentically? 
I don’t write as well when I’m happy if that’s what you mean. It really does suck. I can write about something that someone else has been through, whether it’s someone I actually know or a story I’ve made up. I have a pretty good imagination, and I watch a lot of Law & Order [laughs]. But I definitely feel more connected to the music that I’m writing when I’m in that actual place, and I’m genuinely feeling what I’m writing about. So, yeah, that’s what I prefer. It’s a blessing and a curse because I find myself wanting to be sadder in session so I can write more. It’s really messed up, but it’s the truth.

So where does your dark streak come from?
I don, not know. Really.

Listening to your lyrics, you seem anti-alcohol and drug and, judging from the song “Mrs. Potato Head,” anti-plastic surgery. Do your lyrics reflect how you really feel about these subjects?
I’m definitely not anti-alcohol or drugs. I smoke weed, and I drink occasionally, but I’m like any normal human being. I’m not anti-anything, really. I just think that these subjects can be used in songs in ways other than, “I’m gonna like a party all night and get fed up.” I’d rather talk about those subjects in a more meaningful way. But the plastic surgery thing, yeah, exactly. “Mrs. Potato Head” was something that I had in my head for a long time. I liked the visual of being able to pull apart pieces off of a toy’s face. It’s interesting how that can double as a metaphor for plastic surgery. It took a while to put on paper, though. That was the most challenging song to write, but it was worth it.

So, you’ve created the persona of Cry Baby. Do you envision yourself as an artist like, say, David Bowie, where you will change personas as you move through different periods of your career? Or is Cry Baby going to be around for a while? 
I’m not sure yet. Cry Baby is me, so it’s kind of hard for me to let go of a character that really isn’t a character, you know? I’m still figuring it out. The couple of songs that I’ve written for my next album — if I was to stick with the Cry Baby character, I could definitely continue the story in some way. But if not, I still want what I do next to be in the same world. If you were looking at it as a movie, Cry Baby is a girl in town and now that I’ve told her story, I’m next going to talk about her neighbor. I still want it to be connected in some way.

You do seem to have created a world around Cry Baby. You conceived of the packaging for the record as a kind of “See Dick and Jane Run” reading primer for messed-up people. 
I wanted it to be like a baby board book for adults, and my friend Chloe Tersigni — she’s like 19 years old and incredible, and she illustrated all of it. She was able to bring everything that was in my head onto paper, and I’m so happy with it. It’s my first album, it’s like my baby, and to have someone who I love as an artist draw the entire thing — it’s just a great feeling.

You also conceive of and star in your own videos. You built the sets for “Dollhouse,” did the wardrobe, and now have directed your last three videos for the album, “Pity Party,” “Sippy Cup” and “Soap.” What’s it like for a very independent, self-directed artist to work with a major label that is used to leading when it comes to shaping and marketing artists’ work?
I’m always going to have my ups and downs, but so far, it’s been pretty incredible how much control Atlantic has let me have in the past year or so. I get to direct my own music videos now. I wasn’t able to do that in the beginning, but I did write all the storyboards for the videos for “Dollhouse” and “Carousel.” Obviously, someone else directed them because I wasn’t really confident enough to feel like I could take on that role. But once I told Atlantic that I was ready, they were, like, “Okay, let’s do this.”

1. I realize it’s a little early in your career to be asking this, but do you see yourself eventually working in film or television? I mean, this fall, Lady Gaga will play a substantial role in Ryan Murphy’s American Horror Story: Hotel.
2. I would definitely love to dip my hands in whatever I can. Right now, I’m just so focused on writing music. I’m on tour, and all I want to do is write. But I do want to make a music video for every single song on my album and connect all of them and tell the story of the album visually. I know it’s going to take a while, but that’s something that I’m just willing to go broke for, you know.

Are you funding these videos yourself?
Some of them, yeah. “Dollhouse” was fan-funded. “Carousel” and “Pity Party” were done with the label. But there are definitely times when I’ve been like, I’m going to pay for this if no one will because I really need it. I’ll just do an extra show or whatever to make sure that I get it done. I actually paid for the physical copies of the album — the storybook — because it’s so detailed and cost so much to produce the extra pages. I did three VIP shows because I really wanted my album to look like that.

Speaking of performing, you recently had your purse stolen at a show and then wrote an interesting Tumblr post addressing the trolls who responded to your attempts to get it back. I know that you’ve moved on, but I’m wondering if your post had any effect on the fans who call you “Mom” and otherwise behave like tools. 
I hope it was because it has been something that’s been on my mind for a while. I’m sure that it’s on every artist’s mind 24/7 and it’s really hard for us to speak up about it because we’re judged so harshly. I would like to live in a world where artists and fans can have a better relationship. Fans are always reaching out and asking for a better relationship. They say, “I want to be your best friend,” but they don’t really make you feel like you can open up to them, you know? Because if you were really friends with someone you wouldn’t judge them. You express anything to them, and they’ll know everything about you and they’re fine with that. I would like for that to be how people treat me.

Taylor Swift recently weighed in on fans calling her “Mom,” too. 
They may think it’s endearing to call you “mom” and “queen,” but it actually puts so much pressure on you to, like, stay perfect and to be someone that they can look up to. And like that’s not why I make music. I don’t care to be anybody’s role model. It’s just something that I’ve been thinking about for a while, and I really wanted to express how hurt I was because someone had taken something so personal to me. I mean, that’s so illegal, too.

Was it a fan that stole your purse?
Yeah. I’ve gotten stuff stolen before. On one of my tours, I wore a vintage robe onstage that my friend let me borrow. I took it off onstage, and when I walked offstage, someone climbed up onto the stage and took it. Security was not very good that night.

That’s pretty brazen.
That’s why I was even crazier this time. But I was able to get the robe back by going on social media. Someone told me, “My friend has it, but he’s too scared to talk.” So I was able to get his address and we drove to his house. And even then, he was so rude about the whole situation.

1. I told him that I was personally going to come and get it, and there was this whole thing about, “My mom doesn’t want you to come in, and she’s sleeping and blah blah blah.” I was like, “I don’t want to come inside your house.2.  I don’t want to meet your parents. 3. I just want my robe back. You have something that doesn’t belong to you.” So, the kid put the robe in his mailbox, and my drummer went out and grabbed it. We saw the kid watching us from the blinds the whole time.

That experience could be a song. 
Yeah. You saw his little eyes peeking through the blinds. So, my drummer got the robe back, and then the kid wrote all over Twitter, “She didn’t even come herself. She sent someone else to get it.” And I wrote back, “No, I was there. I was in the car, and I saw you hiding behind your blinds.”  It’s so funny. You get your stuff stolen and then somehow they love to twist it and make it about how you did something wrong. You’re not treated like a human being.

I hear you’re a fan of horror movies. What are some of your favorites?
The Shining is my favorite classic horror movie. I’m trying to think.  I hate that my brain just goes into stealth mode when I like to try to think of my favorite things. I’m going to stick with The Shining.

I realize that The Voice is long behind you, but I’m wondering if you learned anything from that experience that you still use today in terms of your music and performances? 
I definitely learned a lot about the whole behind-the-scenes of TV, and I’m definitely not like, ‘Oh, everything is so perfect, and I’m having such a great time it’s so perfect, you know?’ When I was 15 that’s obviously what I thought. And then when I auditioned when I was 16, I realized that it’s actually very crazy behind the scenes. I’m definitely more comfortable in front of a camera because of it. Which is cool because I was not before that. I was very awkward. And I definitely made a lot of great friends that I’m still friends with today.

The tour is going well. You’re selling out a lot of dates and in Nashville, Pittsburgh, Detroit, and Minneapolis, they’re having to find venues with larger crowd capacities to meet ticket demand. 
I didn’t think it would happen so fast, but I’m really excited because we have these huge Cry Baby blocks that light up and stuff and didn’t fit on some of the smaller stages. So it’s cool that we can actually use them now.

What’s the age range of the fans that are coming out to your shows?
If it’s an all-ages show, it’ll be literally all ages. There will be really weird creepy, like, 60-year-old male humans who come and then there will also be 9-year-old girls there and everything in between.

The article was originally published here.

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