COMM 380:  Media Criticism

Introduction

In vibrant makeup and two-toned hair, Melanie Martinez wowed viewers as a finalist in the third season of the talent show The Voice (DiGiacomo, 2015), which landed her a deal with media industry titan Atlantic Records. On April 2nd, 2014, she released an EP titled Dollhouse.

 

This EP generated buzz around her and her sound: eerie, childish and dark. The full album connected to Dollhouse, titled Cry Baby, was released on August 14th, 2015, and hit #1 on Billboard's Alternative chart (Billboard, 2015). With this record came a swath of merchandise as usual of Atlantic, including a special edition physical album designed to look like a baby board book with illustrations for each track (Atlantic Records, 2015). However, Cry Baby isn't your average pop album: it is a concept album that follows a specific story.

 

Martinez, who was 20 at the time of her debut album release, describes the album as the story of the titular character, Cry Baby. Cry Baby is part suburban scandal and part angst in a tiny package, and partially Martinez herself. Martinez reported in an interview that Cry Baby was meant to be a “fairy tale” version of herself, but not a full representation of Martinez's life (DiGiacomo, 2015).

 

However, it's clear that Martinez had a story to tell, and using lyrical skills and innovative sound design, she tells Cry Baby's story. Cry Baby's story is not pure and sweet, but rather shows the dark underbelly of suburban life, sexual encounters, and epiphanies of madness and plastic surgery. The piece of media “text” that is Cry Baby uses oral and aural signs and symbols to create a dark interpretation of childhood growing pains in a twisted society. Therefore, using the technique of semiotics, Cry Baby can be dissected to show that it successfully uses child-like instrumentation and metaphors to portray dark, adult themes.

 

Lyrical Symbolism

The album is not officially broken up into specific groups, but as the listener goes through the album, it's clear that there are some songs that belong with one another. The track list in and of itself uses cultural signs and symbols: each track on the album has a deceptively childish title, but the lyrics reveal gritty emotions and difficult-to-discuss topics.

 

The first group of songs, Cry Baby, Dollhouse and Sippy Cup

give Cry Baby's background and describe her home life.

“Your heart's too big for your body, it's why it won't fit inside”,

sings Martinez in Cry Baby (Martinez, 2015a).

 

Cry Baby, the titular “character", represents Martinez in part,

but also represents anyone who was teased or bullied

because of their emotional nature. Perhaps more importantly,

as our protagonist, Cry Baby acts as the listeners' framing

for the entire album. An emotional, tearful, apparently

friendless girl who knows far too much about her family's

dark secrets.  

 

In Dollhouse and Sippy Cup, it's revealed that

Cry Baby's mother is an alcoholic due to her husband's 

infidelity. In Sippy Cup, there's a verse that says

“He's still dead when you're done with the bottle / Of course it's a corpse that you keep in the cradle” (Martinez, 2015a). In the context of the story outlined by the music video for Sippy Cup (Martinez, 2015b), the listener presumes a literal interpretation in that Cry Baby's mother has just murdered her husband and is hiding his body in the cradle.

 

Metaphorically, however, it could mean that “he's still dead” means that a marriage has fallen apart beyond saving, and the “corpse in the cradle” is a child born in a loveless marriage in an attempt to save it – which it didn't. Perhaps the child is Cry Baby herself.

 

The second group of songs includes Carousel, Alphabet Boy, Soap and Training Wheels. These songs are about romantic relationships Martinez experienced, seen through Cry Baby's eyes. Out of the four in this group, Alphabet Boy is the most interesting lyrically. After a few careful listens, it becomes clear that each line of the verses is alliterative to ABCD:

 

“You're always aiming paper airplanes at me when you're around / You build me up like

building blocks just so you can bring me down / You can crush my candy cane but you'll never catch

me cry / If you dangle that diploma and I deck you, don't be surprised” (Martinez, 2015a).

 

Using an elementary system like ABCD not only reinforces the core concept of the song, but also represents a childish response in a bad relationship.  

 

The centerpiece of the album is Pity Party, a song of frustration and feelings of exclusion fittingly pieced together with a sample from the 1965 Lesley Gore song It's My Party. Martinez has described this as the turning point of the album, where “no one shows up” to Cry Baby's birthday party, and she just “goes crazy” (Atlantic Records, 2015). While the previous songs were dark in nature, it becomes significantly more text rather than subtext after Pity Party.

 

Tag, You're It and Milk and Cookies describe metaphors for a sexual assault and Cry Baby's murderous revenge on her attacker. Martinez sings for herself and her attacker in Tag, You're It with the assailants voice over-produced, scratchy and deep.

 

Pacify Her shows how Cry Baby no longer feels empathy for others and only wants to hurt them by ruining their relationships, dreamy production creating a dazed and confused feeling. Mrs. Potato Head discusses the futility of cosmetic plastic surgery. Finally, Mad Hatter is Cry Baby's acceptance of her own suffering and madness by revealing that she doesn't care if people think she's crazy - “the best people are” (Martinez, 2015a).

 

Sounds of Childhood

As the beginning of the album, it introduces the main character of Cry Baby, fittingly with sounds of Martinez crying (2015a). It also introduces the use of carnival-like xylophone and toy piano sounds; only two of the instruments that Martinez uses to create a childish and vintage sounding piece altogether. Her voice is clear and sweet, but has a strained quality on some of the words in the chorus to make it sound as if she had been crying. The lyrics describe a girl who's constantly called “Cry Baby”

because her “heart is too big” for her body, with the last verse of the song revealing that Cry Baby has been Martinez the whole time.

 

According to Martinez's official website, as a child, she had been interested in vintage toy sounds, which led to the creation of Dollhouse after she requested her producer to play some in the studio (Atlantic Records, 2015). These toy sounds are used throughout the album, showing most prominently in Dollhouse. The juxtaposition of innocent sounding toys against weighty subject matter such as family strife, adultery and drug abuse is an effective storytelling tactic that gives the story of Cry Baby more depth, and symbolizes that not all is right in Cry Baby's world. This is not just discussing darkness, the story itself is being told by a semi-innocent who experiences that darkness.

 

Symbolically, having the toy sounds continuously play over discussions of infidelity and drug use represent an unsettling truth that even as children, the world is still a dark and scary place. This song is meant to show Cry Baby's home life; the picturesque, sparkling exterior of a perfect suburban family hiding ugly family secrets. The beginning notes are played on a plinking xylophone, shortly accompanied with a ticking clock. These toy sounds reoccur throughout the album, creating a grim and

childish atmosphere.

 

Conclusion

Dark lyrics playing behind chilhood-familar sounds creates a disturbing landscape for a debut album, but all of it was completely intentional on Martinez's part. Cry Baby was generally positively received, except for a scathing review from Billboard's Jason Lipshutz. In his review for Cry Baby, he writes that Martinez sticking to a central concept made her contort into “uncomfortable positions”(Lipshutz, 2015). However, it's important to remember that Cry Baby is intended to be a conceptual album, rather than a pop-hit generator.

 

Conceptual albums like Cry Baby are designed to tell a story; not always a pleasant story, but a story that isn't told very often in modern music. Cry Baby shows an unsettlingly childish interpretation of adult horrors though lyrics, instrumentation, production, and perhaps most importantly, through Martinez's own personal experiences.

 

In an interview with Frank DiGiacomo (2015), Martinez said the following about the album and her previous tendency to feel things strongly:  

 

“...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 thisalbum and creating this character, I think, was me trying to turn the words "cry baby"into a compliment.”

 

It is this individual and personal understanding of childhood insecurity and fear in the face of dark adult-world problems that gives Cry Baby weight.

 

Bibliography

Atlantic Records. (2015). Cry Baby Out Now! Retrieved December 5, 2015, from http://melaniemartinezmusic.com/about.html

 

Billboard. (2015). Melanie Martinez – Chart History. Retrieved December 11, 2015, from http://www.billboard.com/artist/1493230/MelanieMartinez/chart?f=794

 

DiGiacomo, F. (2015, September 4). Melanie Martinez on 'Cry Baby,' Not Wanting to Be a Role Model

& What She Learned From 'The Voice' Retrieved December 5, 2015, from http://www.billboard.com/articles/videos/interviews/6685879/melanie-martinez-cry-baby-role-

model-the-voice

 

Lipshutz, J. (2015, August 21). 'The Voice' Star Melanie Martinez's Ambitious Concept Album 'Cry Baby' Fizzles: Album Review. Retrieved December 10, 2015, from http://w

ww.billboard.com/articles/review/6671140/melanie-martinez-cry-baby-album-review

 

Martinez, M. (2015a). Cry Baby. Kinetics & One Love. Atlantic Records. MP3.

 

Martinez, M. [melanie martinez]. (2015b, July 30). Melanie Martinez - Sippy Cup (Official Video).Retrieved December 10, 2015 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdwaWp59qz8

 

Raible, A. (2015, August 19). Talib Kweli, Nada Surf, Melanie Martinez and More Music Reviews.  Retrieved December 10, 2015, from http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/talib-kweli-nada-surf-melanie-martinez-music-reviews/story?id=33161734#3

 

Selfridge, K. (2015, August 14). Stream Melanie Martinez's Debut LP 'Cry Baby' Retrieved December 11, 2015, from

http://noisey.vice.com/blog/stream-melanie-martinezs-debut-lp-cry-baby