electra Heart is undeniably one of the most impactful pop records of the 2010s this jewel handcrafted by Marina Diamandis is an underrated electroop bible that often gets left out of wider conversations about how pop girls have evolved towards meta and reflective art like we have today in this overdue retrospective I'm going to talk about the sprawling era that initially divided critics only to become a cult classic that continues to impact both Marina and the pop world's views on identity love and executing a concept album this record is arguably one of the most ahead of its time creations in modern pop something that even bankrupted her label at the time due to its scope you guys know the drill i'm going to talk about the journey to the record the era itself and then I'll do a trackbytrack analysis before assigning a score building Electraart Marina Diamandis then known as Marina and the Diamonds got her start as an artist signing with Warner Music under 679 Records in 2008 building her career through live performances and EPs Marina built her fan base by creating vulnerable and thrilling pop with an indie slant her debut single Obsessions dropped in 2009 leading to the Crown Jewels EP that summer by the end of that year Marina was actually named the runnerup to BBC's Sound of 2010 poll behind then fellow upstart Ellie Golding her first proper hit in the UK was Hollywood which hit 12 on their charts and was followed shortly by the Family Jewels which debuted in the top five and was critically wellreceived it spawned two more top 40 singles I am not a robot and Oh no the latter actually experiencing a resurgence on Tik Tok many years later solid stuff for a debut especially for someone who was definitely more Kate Bush than Katy Perry in 2010 state side the album just sold 4,000 copies in its first week something that Marina would lament in an interview blaming her then label Chop Shop Records and noting the success of Lady Gaga in particular marina would cancel touring in the states to engineer a new sound and a new record speaking of Gaga Marina looked to the Fame Monster being an extension and a sequel as a blueprint to a follow-up for the family jewels titled Die Life dye also representing female and German it was meant to be a dark pop record about feminism sexuality and stereotypes political and abrasive interestingly enough Marina wanted to write most of that record herself and only work with just one producer living Dead: A Deep Cut is said to be one of the leftovers of that lost record which would eventually be folded into what became Marina's pop satire Opus looking to the internet particularly Tumblr which was huge at the time Marina decided to curate a persona online a character who would become the centerpiece of her new album Electraart electraheart would be an embodiment of 1970s Americana an intersection of tragedy and ambition heavily inspired by figures like Marilyn Monroe Mary Antinet Madonna another big figure who influenced Electraart was Britney Spears a pop princess paragon herself played by the perils of fame and fortune the overlap between Dy Life and Electraart's themes label issues and pressure forced Marina to eventually consolidate these concepts into what would become Electra Heart electra being a reference to the Greek tragedy and Marina's own middle name Lambrini which means light the heart being a reference to the album's aversion to accepting love to craft the sound of the record Marina changed course and sought out the biggest producers of the era people who themselves actually interacted with the pop icons that she wanted to emulate marina noted that writing pop due to its simplicity and repetitiveness was actually challenging leading her to become more collaborative she would end up enlisting Benny Blanco Circuit Dr luke Greg Kirsten Rick Nolles and Stargate amongst others despite the different producers Marina sought to create a pop opera that blended subg genres like new wave pop punk leaving behind the indie rock sounds of her debut marina is an academic at heart so she really engineered Electra Heart as a satirical examination of femininity but also the pop star cycle itself even attempting to release six singles before the album came out akin to the Teenage Dream era she would only achieve three four core personas were developed visually for the album housewife beauty queen home wrecker and idol teen each served as an examination of an archetype that Marina sought to explore musically and visually it should be noted that these are loose descriptors and each one actually has overlap and unique traits to them visually the beauty queen was the most prominent one with Primadana being the only song to really get a full visual as well as being the album cover itself to tease the album Marina started The Archetypes an 11 video series that kicked off with Fear and Loathing in August 2011 in September we got the first promo single of the record Radioactive which was produced by Stargate and shocked everyone at the time it was streamlined formulaic and disciplined compared to her earlier work this song would actually end up being cut from the main track list due to not fitting the concept it was more of an icebreaker to get fans accustomed to Marina's incoming pop sound still it managed to chart at 25 in the UK impressively enough January 2012 was pivotal with Marina acknowledging the archetypes in a tweet the album was being mixed at the time and even after physicals had been pressed she was still writing new songs home Record was released to anyone who followed her email thread in February and February also marked the announcements of the Lonely Hearts Club Tour march 1st marked the official reveal of Electra Heart and its album art showing off the beauty queen persona but she made history later that month when she dropped Primadana as the proper lead single to the album primadana was a smash hit her highest charting and selling song to date in the UK and other territories it was inspired by an ex who actually called her one and she channeled that into an opraic pop satire despite not charting in the US it actually became a small radio hit which gained her some fans and even went platinum here it's very important to remember that Marina has never really been a big chart star or she's just been blessed with a loyal fan base that continually shows up for whatever visual or concept she has something that has proven critical to her longevity as an artist compared to some of her peers who have fallen off on April 27th 2012 Marina released Electra Heart what happened after was a true surprise people ended up proving her right commercially the record ended up being Marina's first number one debut on the UK charts and modestly performed well elsewhere it would hit 31 on the Billboard in the US and number two on the dance electronic charts eventually hitting gold critically initially it was a disaster what happens when you do your job a little too well this happens marina had done such a good job of making fun of Pop that people just ended up giving it mixed reviews not realizing the joke i would have never guessed that this was a 57 on Metacritic but it seems like fans got the message where critics did not marina herself said that the press hated Electraart but it is a fan favorite let's look at some of these reviews even the positive ones were a bit shady mentioning other pop starlets and begrudgingly crediting it as professional pop the Independence review went out of its way to call her an inauthentic British Katy Perry but most infamously Clash gave it a 1 out of 10 rating calling it the end of her career something so egregious that it would end up being retracted by later editors so why the vitriol the press at the time just did not understand the concept the British press in particular painted it as a betrayal of her original sound and her attempt at cashing in on the popular sounds at the time americans who weren't really present for the family jewels were actually kinder and didn't realize at the time that this was a satire one that was just made so well and so earnest in execution that to them it just ended up becoming just another pop record i find it ironic that at the time Born to Die had been critically panned for being inauthentic that Marina was also getting the other side of the coin where Lana was accused of faking indie cred marina was being shut out for being a supposed sellout marina would continue the archetype series with new installments and videos power and Control would be the second single i think it's deeply underrated written with a member of the Swedish House Mafia this track spoke to power struggles and relationships very ABA inspired an underrated simplistic video one more single and its proper video How to Be a Heartbreaker was released towards the end of that year revisiting the era and watching the videos made me realize that we lost so much in the streaming age marina continued to promote the album in 2013 even dropping unreleased tracks through the video series like Evil and the title track there was a collaboration with former label mate and friend Charlie XEX just desserts which I thought was a cute little collab that was not intended for the album marina would formally kill off Electra Heart via sleeping pills in August she properly closed out the era with part 11 Electra Heart to conclude the archetypes and around the end of that year she ended up beginning work on her follow-up fruit a record that returned to quote and unquote honesty and her more indie oriented writing style electra Heart Forever the legacy in this section I want to discuss the record's themes and impact electraart doesn't really follow an obvious plot nor it is intended to it's purposefully opaque allowing listeners to examine the four different archetypes and apply it to themselves and the world much like a museum exhibit each song belongs to an archetype supposedly but also overall forms this persona that Marina embodied at the time its distinct lack of a canonized narrative is what I think keeps it eternally relevant it's a living aesthetic frozen in time reverberating in relevance personally I've come to view this record as something of a protest record by an artist who didn't really fit the vision of her label i question whether Atlantic or 679 understood Marina at all or they were just so enamored by this concept that they just let her do it she collected the best pop producers at the time who happened to be in on the joke and made highbrow art disguised as lowbrow blockbustery trash a lot of people act surprised when Marina eventually decided to go independent upon finishing her contract with Atlantic but Electraart's performance and the way it went made me think that that was always going to happen atlantic her parent label never went to bat for her the same way they did after this album they continued to fund and support her releases until she left but this record all but bankrupted 679 Records at the time with no Grammys critical acclaim or major chart success to show for it at the time i think it's a baller move on a visual level I argue that Electraheart is just as seinal as Born to Die and Pure Heroine were for the Tumblr generation that I grew up with where she initially built her persona off what we saw on the site eventually people saw her as an inspiration the idol team that she formed was a self-fulfilling prophecy with users adopting aesthetics and the personas themselves you really could not escape edits and drifts of her on that site from 2012 to 2014 the shelf life has been amazing on Tik Tok Bubblegum [ __ ] Primadana How to be a heartbreaker and even Teen Idol have had surprisingly big blowups speaking to Electra Heart's place as a time capsule and a seminal work for the early 2010s one moment outside of the era that I just think is iconic is when she performed Teen Idol a song about self harm and insecurity for school children it captures how easy it is to combine undeniably catchy music with grim dark meaning and how people miss the point i often credit Lana and Lord's Rise as the beginning of the end of the popeism movement at the time but Marina killing Electraart in hindsight was another indicator of these trends sonically I always find myself loving different tracks whenever I relisten but that's because my taste always changes at the time of the release I was a huge fan of the Idol team tracks mainly because I was the demographic and age that they appealed to eventually I grew to love the beauty queen and the home record tracks just as much i always found it interesting though that the housewife category has the fewest songs likely due to Marina not vibing with it as a writer thematically this record is going to be examined as high feminist art in a very distant future marina's unique vantage point as an outsider trying to make sense of American femininity from the 1950s onwards lends this detach cold academic tone to it it's very scientific it's almost sterile which ironically has led it to becoming texts that I see people interact with and integrate in their own lives i remember when I first watched Barbie 2023 in the movie theaters and I thought damn Primadana would have been brilliant in this scene and I feel like that speaks to the ripple effects I think this album has it goes to show that interacting with the archetypical becomes the self-fulfilling prophecy of becoming meta itself which really speaks to Marina as more than just a musical artist but an authority in the space of culture itself for the track by track I'm going to cover each track using the Platinum Blonde 10 anniversary reissue track listing which puts the original standard and then the additional tracks the album opens with Bubblegum [ __ ] an explosive track produced by Rick Nolles marina said that at some point this is actually maybe her favorite track and even considered making it a single but due to radio mind you this is pre-streaming so radio was everything this track was just not usable the track is quintessential pop it channels fame era gaga but it's mixed in with the brashness of early Katy Perry but with Marina's unique vocals the lyrics are very in character for the teen idol persona i love the roller coaster vibe where Marina shifts the melody and the tone throughout the song verse two is so specific the callbacks to vintage lingerie and then the iconic dear diary I met a boy welcome to the life of Electra heart couplet the world building is excellent marina has mentioned that Atlantic had wanted her to do a music video for this in 2021 but due to her Ancient Dreams promo she said no pre Madonna should have smashed charter in the states the instrumental channels Robin Light and early 2010 sounds so well the blend of the guitars the bassy drum hits i love the inversion the chorus is big but the instrumental peels back to let her voice shine i really love that the noisiness in the verses instrumental is cleared out to metatitually shine a light on Marina for her to admit that she is indeed the primadana it's only at the very end that everything comes together into this bright memorable final chorus that soarses the lyrics may not have specificity that Marina was known for at the time but the structure and the antilimactic like rye construction speaks to her artistry lies is a more personal track that blends a dubstepy dancy instrumental with a heart-wrenching track that calls out a lying lover this track really hinges on her emotional tone and the ability to kind of track to a melody her optic voice elevates this this is one of the few housewife songs on the record layering a sense of tragedy to the archetype someone whose entire life centers around keeping a man in a home is ruined by a promise that is not kept to her home wrecker is an underrated track i feel like it's part monologue part banger it introduces the homerecker archetype right after the housewife it feels very deliberate this track puts us in the perspective of a woman who seeks to finally take from the world we're given a look into the psyche of an aggressor the pre chorus and the I don't belong to anyone is part liberating part imprisoning and that there's a lack of intimacy and trust i'm only happy when I'm on the run is so badass but it also reminds you how flawed and wounded this character is she'll never be happy verse three always stuck out to me because she glibly announces that she and her object of affection are just not going to last but also the admission that she wants superior love that only exists in dreams which in itself is its own motif starring role is one of the most cutting and vulnerable tracks on the album it's something that touches all of the archetypes it's produced by Greg Kirsten this track opens with a very simple chord sequence as Electraart sings about a lover who used her physically but was just unavailable emotionally all he gives her is a heartbeat the preoruses of her having to hide her feelings or even comparing him to her dad are just brutal the chorus feels like her taking back her power choosing to leave this farce of a show rather than play the supporting role the bridge speaks to the self-awareness and how it does nothing for her he will never change and she cannot escape the pain but it is a nice look into the psyche of this character state of dreaming was said to be inspired by the tragedy of Marilyn Monroe null's production just channels this liinal dream space as Electraheart channels beauty queen to underscore how artifice can really cover up deeply troubled people my life is a play being the core repetition throughout is a warning and a cry for help being someone else's dream is actually a cruel nightmare power and Control is a home wrecker club banger that foregoes deep lyrics to use the production to tell this pushandpull story as Electra Marina breaches greater gender dynamics her lover is not giving her enough to work with and he's not even good-looking enough to get away with it so the chorus is her declaring war while the post chorus is her admitting that equality is possible but not in this case the bridge always gets me because it's this double meaning that she's repeating I'm weak in a fugue state of vulnerability before she comes back in doubling down on her crusade living Dead is another personal favorite of mine i think that it's the best blend of Marina's quirkiness and the pop sound that she really wanted to have this era the song is very full and well-developed some theorize that it was actually the title track for Die Life which would make more sense the lyrics are so stark black and depressive but then you have this bouncy production that she plays with using the repetition of each couplet's end during the chorus as the drums hit this song hearkens back to the depression that Marina faced after dropping her first album she had done all of this work she had achieved this dream of hers only to realize once it's done she just was not happy with her personal life it didn't fix anything i feel like this sort of existentialism frames Electra Heart as a coping mechanism of sorts she had sublimated herself into this character to avoid dealing with very personal feelings only to realize that this is how she gets them out teen Idol is obviously an idol teen track she had seen a sweater with the phrase on it at a festival and then came up with the song obviously the word play between idol and idol really makes it work idol as in someone to be worshiped idol as in being lazy or passive but Marina's own words about how it was about how she felt like her youth had been taken from her and those years were a blur that really makes the track hit harder the song itself she considers cringe in retrospect but I think it's earnestness and honesty is why it's a fan favorite and one of the Diamond's favorite tracks the intonation and the casualness of her sharing with us these teenage dreams and living nightmares wishing she'd been a prom queen instead of burning up a Bible feeling suicidal it's that lamentation of not living it up when we're supposed to it's this peak Tumblr sentiment about wasted youth that just rings eternal valley of the Dolls is a housewife song that was inspired by an old film of that same name the track speaks to the void that Electra Heart faces living in LA and I think it circles back to State of Dreaming in the sense that it's also another Marilyn inspired track about tragedy from feeling empty the lines in my life I got this far i'm ready for the last harrah dying like a shooting star touch on that hopelessness of reaching the highest point in your life and just waiting for it to all crash down it also could refer to drugs a lot of people overlook that dolls in the song's context and within the 1960s themselves usually referred to pills this song is just bleak hypocrites is a gorgeously produced track by Rick Nolles it's one of the most underrated tracks on the record it's a play on hypocrites people who contradict themselves and the Greek character himself the song has her sing about someone who can break her down into a young girl who makes her sick with his preaching the chorus is her taking her power back telling him "Who are they to tell her who to be?" The bridge where she calls him out for his martyr complex right into that gorgeous instrumental break that's just one of my favorite moments on the album fear and Loathing was the original closer on the UK standard it's a beauty queen track that brings the archetype down to its most raw form it works as a closer in the sense that Electra finally learns to let go of a few things that were holding her down and it also feels like an exorcism of sorts an ego and a confessional that speaks just as much to Marina's own feelings of inadequacy as an artist i really loved the ending where her grandmother is singing in Greek then of course we get How to be a heartbreaker which remains an absolute classic pop smash produced by pre- disgrace Dr luke Benny Blanco and Circuit we get this instructional but satirical smash record about being a home wrecker there's four rules about distance wearing your heart on your cheek ghosting the chorus is just flashy seinal pop music punctuated with the cheeky at least I think I do the bridge does something cool where we finally get a look into the heartbreaker why she does what she does before the armor comes back on radioactive comes on after it's considered a teen idol song which does fit but the themes about leaving first speak to other songs on the record stargates production lend this a classic club banger vibe but it's really Marina's voice that again makes this feel like something that not any other artist could just do it does make sense why she cut it sexia apparently was a track conceived during the die life album concept which makes sense as to why it doesn't feel connected with the Electraheart archetypes or sounds still the commentary on gender is very fascinating i love the deliberate break in assets on verse two that's the sort of turn of phrase that sets Marina apart from her peers it's that ry academic vibe to her even when she's talking crassly by the Stars is a simple piano ballad that talks about a time someone had bought her a literal star which inspires her to sing about how she thinks people think that they can buy her affection it seems to be about someone who wasn't even romantically linked to her perhaps a family member it sonically reminded me a little bit of Teen Idol and in some ways forget from Fruit lonely Hearts Club was produced by Captain Cuts and has this dense electronic sound to it that makes it stand out a bit it's another track about the loneliness she faces and an invocation of finding company with other people who get that it's cute but I do see why it was cut evil is interesting because this is a track just for fans on Soundcloud for such a long time i remember only listening to it on Soundcloud so it's odd having it on streaming it's a home record track and it plays with how love can spell evil backwards with an O i find it cute as a condemnation of love she really twists it into something that's corrupting and sinister for both parties the dichotomy she draws between things in the verses back up her points it's not my personal favorite but it is cute finally we close out with Electra Heart which is a track featuring beta tracks lyrically it's definitely a bit more sparse than the rest of the album which makes sense because it is a feature the instrumental definitely helps tell the story the organs in the song make it feel like a eulogy of sorts to the passing of the character lights they blind me always struck me as the camera flashes finding her dead body somewhere after she had taken her own life overall Electraheart was an ambitious and mostly misunderstood record that finally got its flowers just a little too late i still find it extremely enjoyable as a record i'm happy to give The Standard and some extra tracks a 9 out of 10 rating to it i felt like it got the job done of getting Marina cult audience who's tuned in to whatever concept she has i would consider this my second favorite album behind Fruit but I love the fact that she's still making music and I'm excited to cover her upcoming Princess of Power record and that's a wrap be sure to keep your eyes out for other video essays i have a series that's coming up called Ghost of Pops Past i can't wait to share that with you once I finally record a few episodes i want to give a quick shout out to my members thank you so much for supporting my channel and taking the extra step a shout out to my subscribers i know I've been gone for almost a month but I really needed that time to kind of like heal and rep prioritize and figure out what I wanted to do with this channel because I'd only been going off recent releases and there's a drought right now but I will be back to cover Lord Summer and all of the other pop releases that are coming shortly to fill the void 2024 has left anyway thank you so much and I hope to see you next