ConstableReggie

‘ancient dreams in a modern land’ is just such an interesting phrase to me I kind of wish she saved the song and did a whole concept album around it (not that I have any ideas about what that concept album would be, maybe greek mythology retold in modern age?)

RIGHT like she was blessed with such a pretty name and she’s just not gonna use it?!?
 
like a month ago someone posted an old yearbook picture of dua lipa and all the comments were like That’s her real name?! That’s not just a stage name?! 
 
like mamas if you got a good, unique, pretty name - USE IT!!!!!!! 

Honestly bad move for her career to change her name, but if she really wanted to change it she should've gone with Marina Diamandis, not just MARINA. like girl-

the way id love to do an in depth review of marina's discography 
i just dont have time tbf

this is so real because i remember when that short snippet (YOU!!!) leaked wayyy before l+f and i was so excited… it sounded like real, good pop music 
 
and then she released what she released and it didn’t sound like that 

you demo. that's the post.

Okay I have a theory that Karma was originally written about Jack as well and Marina came up with the Me Too explanation afterwards. It was written in the same sessions as You (which is about him) and there are similarities in the lyrics (eg, underneath I see just what you are / I know you inside and out out out). Also this quote from Marina about the song: “Since [we wrote Karma], there’s really been an explosion of cases and experiences that followed the Harvey Weinstein situation. I didn’t really think about that in relation to the song for a while, but then when we were reproducing it, it felt so strange.”
 
Honestly if you listen to Karma from the perspective of a bad relationship rather than the “systematic misogyny and sexual abuse employed by powerful figures in the media” (quote from album press release) it kinda makes sense. The lyrics are so vague and barely make any reference to those things. It sounds like she’s singing about a shitty boyfriend more than some powerful Hollywood abuser 

Okay I have a theory that Karma was originally written about Jack as well and Marina came up with the Me Too explanation afterwards. It was written in the same sessions as You (which is about him) and there are similarities in the lyrics (eg, underneath I see just what you are / I know you inside and out out out). Also this quote from Marina about the song: “Since [we wrote Karma], there’s really been an explosion of cases and experiences that followed the Harvey Weinstein situation. I didn’t really think about that in relation to the song for a while, but then when we were reproducing it, it felt so strange.”
 
Honestly if you listen to Karma from the perspective of a bad relationship rather than the “systematic misogyny and sexual abuse employed by powerful figures in the media” (quote from album press release) it kinda makes sense. The lyrics are so vague and barely make any reference to those things. It sounds like she’s singing about a shitty boyfriend more than some powerful Hollywood abuser 

theyr're not. its a inside joke in the entertainment industry that grammys are the bottom of the barrel out of the big awards like oscars, tony, etc. 
 
 

unholy has made my life significantly worse. i was so much happier before i had to hear it every fucking second. i will never forgive sam and kim for what they’ve done to me

clarity (album) being her best work in all regards yup yup i'm sorry but it's actually true!

i’m so bored with her can someone please just leak some 10 year old demos or something
 
7 minute froot is awaiting her moment.

honestly that tweet aged so bad, but in september 2018 the album might have been good! with the original artwork and singles she wanted, the album wasn’t mixed so she hadn’t ruined it in that aspect too
 
the album just is ‘too many cooks’ personified

she was under pressure (by Atlantic and her own fans and probably herself) but I think she wanted to do that sound, she said the songs were meant to be given away so that could explain the commercial sound, but if this is Marina’s revisionism again then maybe she was influenced by Jack and disconnect for the more commercial sound. I think in her own words she’s admitted to doubting herself and leaning in others during the era.

also, I remember in 2019, someone emailed the original designer and they said the original handmade heaven artwork was scrapped “because of politics” and they were made to work through christmas and new years, if true this explains handmade heaven randomly being delayed from January to February and why the cover she ended up using was so... not it (I remember the preview dropping and thinking it would be a much more zoomed out picture, for it to just be a slightly less cropped image)
 
I do wonder if this is why marina sort of ‘gave up’ she seemed so excited and then didn’t want to do anything, in that youtube q&a she was asked why she picked the covers and she said ‘I just don’t know!’ and awkwardly laughed, her description of what she saw the albums as with her synaesthesia was so different too, so I do believe some kind of bts drama happened. 
 
she also said the singles would be different from the first songs on the album then proceeded to release the first 3 tracks as singles and completely ignored fear (until project karma)
 
maybe it was just the last straw for her ‘big comeback’ and realised it was never going to live up to FROOT (in her fans eyes) and threw L+F to the wolves. I don’t even think L+F is bad, it’s definitely a bad era and an average album, just not marina’s average.
 
she just waited so long then reproduced songs (she should have kept the Swedish songs for her next album instead of reworking what she already had) and kept polishing ones she had and overworked the songs. a lot of the demos are much better just by having less stuff, and like we’ve all said just some simple song swaps would have made all the difference. we have local files, it’s just a shame she can’t profit off them (idk why she doesn’t use bandcamp?)

my Land + Fill theory is that she was pushed into releasing the album by her team and label. Since she didn't feel confident or felt pressured to go down a more 'commercial' sounding route, maybe another shot of her having commercial success similar to Electra Shart. We know that atlantic asked her to do a video for bubblegum bitch after it blew up on tiktok (atlantic bffr) so if her label pressured her to go down a more 'commercially' sounding route, I wouldn't be surprised. 

https://dbree.org/v/f9678c 
fear and loathing demo snippet leaked 

I agree I think marina has retconned the background of the song, (honestly she’s the queen of retcon, her saying she was doing a TFJ repackage then getting annoyed a few months later on her blog about ‘bullshit’ rumours about her doing a repackage are just  who’s fault is that girl!!) but I don’t think it’s about jack. I do think it’s just about someone they knew, why would she say “I know you inside and out” if it was actually about random high level people? I know that can be a general blanket statement but idk feels like it was maybe about a friend or maybe someone at Atlantic they knew or something
 
also I think ‘you’ must have been such an awkward writing session for poor joe janiak, stuck in the middle of marina and jack unless jack literally didn’t get the message, maybe all these songs were for him to try and get a message cause she doesn’t seem to like confrontation unless it’s on twitter. in her track by track she says ‘you’ is about someone that was a bit of a shit but redeemed themselves, but where is the redemption miss marina, he couldn’t even buy you flowers! considering they’re both millionaires and he could have rung any florist to get them sent to his OWN HOUSE is so… but we do only know one side of the story

Oh dear…. I love Marine but this is giving very Rupi Kaur Tumblr poetry energy 

Okay I have a theory that Karma was originally written about Jack as well and Marina came up with the Me Too explanation afterwards. It was written in the same sessions as You (which is about him) and there are similarities in the lyrics (eg, underneath I see just what you are / I know you inside and out out out). Also this quote from Marina about the song: “Since [we wrote Karma], there’s really been an explosion of cases and experiences that followed the Harvey Weinstein situation. I didn’t really think about that in relation to the song for a while, but then when we were reproducing it, it felt so strange.”
 
Honestly if you listen to Karma from the perspective of a bad relationship rather than the “systematic misogyny and sexual abuse employed by powerful figures in the media” (quote from album press release) it kinda makes sense. The lyrics are so vague and barely make any reference to those things. It sounds like she’s singing about a shitty boyfriend more than some powerful Hollywood abuser 

saying 'I wasn't forced into releasing this album' is exactly what someone that was forced to release an album would say also I'm not sure when her 'break' was either, FROOT era ended in mid 2016, then she met Jess (her manager) in late 2016, went to LA January-May(ish) 2017 to record enough songs for an album, then did coachella and performed disconnect, I do wonder if this was supposed to be her "big comeback" then she had second thoughts (she said being on stage didn't feel right) and went to uni, but she still said she was writing & reregistered if its worth it in late 2017, then worked all through 2018.
the weird thing with the 2017 tracks is she said she wrote them with no expectation and was going to give them away, and I wonder if that's why they sound less 'forced' than the 2018 tracks? she admitted she wrote EYL and OT to try and make herself happy which is really sad:( I do like OT's lyrics, the production is just not it, EYL would have been better if it didn't have the 'enjoy your problems' line, if you have to explain your reasoning behind it then it's not a good lyric imo. also I find it really sad she was writing all these songs about how unhappy her relationship was in 2017, then proceeded to go out with Jack for three more years EOTE wasn't even really about Jack it was for a movie, and Superstar's lyrics if you look at them, they don't hold any high praise towards him, she wrote her most romantic song (Froot) when she was single and bored on a rainy day
 
now she's independent I hope she can release things on her own schedule, she kept saying she wanted to be able to 'just drop' songs whenever she wanted yet has literally never done that in her career so far, in the TFJ era she wanted to cycle between releasing an album then an EP, but if she was contracted for 5 albums, why would she? Charli XCX dropped 2 10 track mixtapes and they didn't count towards her album contract. so why would she put effort into 6 songs if it wouldn't count towards her contract, even if she put them on the next album people would complain that album only had 6 'new' songs instead of 12.

She’s just a cringey millennial, I’m not sure how deep it really is lol

not me coming into this thread to read marinara needs dr. rape in 2023, the final nail in her career coffin

I don't like to be so harshly critical of modern MARINA; yeah her lyrics are simpler but she still has some bangers. I feel like "Soft to Be Strong" would have fit nicely on FROOT, the title track of ADIAML is a well-produced career highlight and so is "End of the Earth"  shoutouts to "Venus Fly Trap" and "Handmade Heaven"

I feel awful for criticizing her because I love this woman, and it takes guts to write poetry and to share it with the world, but holy shit, that thing is horrendous.  I felt so embarrassed reading it.
 
It really made me think of the poems I used to write when I was an edgy teen. 
No need to say I stopped poetry and shifted to only writing stories. 
 
English isn't my mother tongue but I can tell it's incredibly bad style-wise. 
It looks like she used every tools in the poetry box to make it a poem; on top of my head, the overused hunger metaphor she hammers throughout (the more you overdo it, the less it becomes powerful and/or significant), the artificial, useless repetitions (approve/try/grind/ and then the i am free), those stacked words (?? I only get it if it's for the rhythm, or perhaps to highlight them, but I'm not sure it's effective). 
 
It's like she felt the need to use every figure of speech she knows so it looks like poetry. Real beginner error: it ends up being superficial and try-hard. It's not poetry but fancy words thrown on the paper just for the sake of it. It lacks subtelty and authenticity, which poetry should have. 
 
And if you need to disguise your words to make sure people get what the fuck you're doing, you're doing really bad.
 
I didn't plan on ranting that much because of a harmless poem but here I am.  Good for her if she's proud of her work and good for the stans to have new content.
What makes me disappointed and embarrassed, though, is the fact that woman used to be such a GOOD songwriter. She used to express things so simply and beautifully. You're supposed to get better at your craft with time, not the opposite. Seriously, what happened? 

Ugh I just really really don't like the poem. I don't understand the line breaks, they just feel really jarring. And I feel like theres no sense of cohesiveness, like its just a bunch of different ideas and images put together.
 
And btw I'm not the elitist type who gets mad at celebrities for doing poetry. I generally really liked Lana's. But this is just.. ugh..