ButterflyBones

I don't think the smoking is the problem. Plenty of other major singers smoke daily and sing perfectly well, and although I'm not a professional, I can safely say I've been smoking for years now and I've had no problems with my singing voice. I think the biggest problem (aside of singing while sick and touring ofc) is her using stressful techniques and fighting against her own voice. She seems to push herself into an uncomfortable pitch too often as well. For instance, if she admitted to having trouble hitting the notes for "Play Date" live, I can't imagine the tones she used throughout K-12 were any less stressful for her. She's definitely done permanent damage to her voice, but hopefully if she rests and takes the time to learn better techniques, she can stop the damage from progressing further.

It's taken as an insult instead of constructive criticism, probably. Melanie is very talented, but she won't be able to keep up with her own music if she doesn't take her vocal damage seriously and rest. She's been using extremely stressful vocal techniques without proper training for years too, which can't help. Maybe, but it doesn't sound like there were many better takes. A lot of these recordings clearly ended up being used in her demos/finals. She seems to be using autotune as a crutch lately and drowning her vocals in her instrumentals, which is telling. Even on her worst performances during the "Cry Baby" era, the recordings hardly needed autotune.

I knew her voice was damaged after the tours and sickness, but it's worse than I thought in "Garden_2". Pushing through the strain isn't helping her. I hope she takes a legitimate break after the new album comes out and takes time to rest her voice without the pressures of recording and performing.

I think the Addams-family-esque animation was great for After School, and felt connected to the Cry Baby era because of the hand-drawn art. But it doesn't quite fit the mystical elements of MM3, whereas Pastelae's artwork has a more fitting "uncanny valley" and otherworldly look to it already. I can't exactly picture a snippet of "Sirens" or "Mother of Pearl" done in the After School style, for example. But either way, I won't be disappointed unless she hires a 10 year old to animate her snippets in MS Paint, lol.

Personally, Fingers Crossed and Needle & Thread are some of my favorite tracks I've ever heard from her. The lyrics are very vulnerable, and seem more personal even though they're still thematically based. They show a lot of growth in her musical style, and I'm really looking forward to this next album, even if those don't make the final cut. On another note, the artwork for this LP/film is going to be insane. I'm 99% sure Pastelae will be working on snippet animations again too, unless that MoP leak was just a really good fake, which I doubt. Hoping we really do get a 2022 release.

Where did you find that out? Interesting. She seemed really stoked about it, if that's true!

I completely agree, and I wonder what she plans on doing for the visuals. Considering she said this next film will be less of a musical, it'd be interesting if she left a few songs out so that the album release would have some extra material on it(and incentivize more people to stream it/buy it). I'd be willing to bet though that even if she isn't giving full visuals to each song, there will be a full segment for Garden, Tunnel Vision, Leche of the Sirens, and Void. I just get a strong feeling from the sound and lyrics that these will be standouts.

I'm fairly sure the $6M was from her record label. She made them a lot of money from the Cry Baby tours and sales, so giving her back the $6M probably wasn't as crazy as it sounded, even for a first-time director. I do think they're likely to give her a lower budget this time around though, because even if the money is expendable, the last film being a commercial failure couldn't have been exactly thrilling for Atlantic. On the bright side, she said herself that this movie will have more of a plotline, and be less of a living music video. Let's hope she follows through on that!

I hope in the future she'll take more creative input from other professionals. Her effort to write/direct/design/etc. is commendable, and she's done a lot of amazing things. But I feel like some of her projects suffer from her want to do it all herself. It's one thing when she's directing personal music videos, it's another thing when it's a worldwide release with a $6M backing from her record label. For instance, bringing in experienced screenwriters and directors for K-12 probably would have made the film a lot more cohesive and garnered more attention from a wider audience. It definitely would have received better reviews and made back more money. I also wonder if Atlantic lowered the budget for the next release, considering she's been saving money that was meant for other videos. Regardless, I'm sure she can do something great with time and effort. I'm just hoping she learned from the mistakes in K-12. I can tell she's ready to move on to a new era, and I'm ready to see it. Let's keep our fingers crossed that it's her best project yet.

I wouldn't be surprised if this next release outsells K-12 and After School. It has a lot of unique concepts that should draw in a wider audience, and it seems more experimental with its sound. Her past albums were very exclusive to the Cry Baby aesthetic both visually and sonically, which wasn't many people's cup of tea(and got her a lot of unfair criticism). I think K-12 was a great stepping stone for her growth as a musician and filmmaker, but I can tell she's ready to try something different. Let's hope her label doesn't push her into a corner with budget and approving tracks, like they apparently did with the last album.

I think it's less that her voice is damaged(and I don't agree with the people who blame it on her occasional smoking), and moreso that her new music just isn't adapting to her maturing vocal range. You can hear the strain when she tries to hit high notes that she used to be able to hit more easily as a teenager, and even back then, she said something about Play Date being her least favorite song to perform because she struggles to hit the notes. But I wondered the same thing about the K-12 tour, definitely. She's been using a lot of backing tracks and lip syncing lately, which isn't inherently a bad thing, but it shows she's not used to putting on a fully choreographed show while singing at the same time like most other major pop singers do. Her performances are getting more interesting IMO, but her vocals are lacking. We'll see how she progresses though, of course. I feel like this next album will make or break the future of her career.

Side note, I know people used to make fun of her "indie girl" voice a lot, especially during Cry Baby. But does anyone else feel a little off about her new way of singing certain songs, especially experimental tracks? Someone said she sounds drunk when she sings lately, and I kind of see what they mean. Also, as her voice is maturing, her vocal range seems more limited and her voice seems to get tired more easily with live performances. I wonder if she's going to start writing music to adapt to her newer, softer style in the future.

This is going to be long, but this is just my opinion so feel free to skip over it. I agree that the K-12 album ended up being regressive, and the film was lacking. But I fully believe that with better beat production, and taking the time to work out the issues with budget restrictions, it would have been a commercial success. Melanie was definitely putting 110% of her effort in, and unfortunately it just missed the mark. Keep in mind, she also had an extended writing team and multiple producers on Cry Baby that she didn't have on K-12, which explains a lot about Cry Baby being the stronger of the two albums. In a way, it doesn't feel to me like a complete Sophomore project, but more like it should be stapled on to the Cry Baby album, and I think the lack of input from more experienced musicians is why. After School is the most recent example of her music(aside from leaks), and while I think it's a big step forward in her lyrical growth, it still feels messy at points. The lyrics often sound crammed in, the beats Keenan created were anticlimactic, and some of the songs don't even seem to belong on the EP(I.E. Notebook, which everyone apparently disliked, and Bakery, which should have remained a single). It appealed to a much smaller audience her past projects, and even many of her fans seemed to dislike the EP as a whole. As someone who admittedly grew out of the CryBaby album very quickly, and was never very into K-12, I'm anxious to see her evolve and move on past the restrictions of the Cry Baby storyline. It would be one thing if she was releasing side projects of separate material in different styles, but she isn't, and it's definitely going to affect her career if she isn't careful.

Did this thread die overnight? 👀

Where did you find all of these? There are quite a few I haven't been able to find.

I doubt she'd postpone another album, leaks aside. Respectfully, at this point it could ruin the growth of her music career to take another 3 year hiatus. She lost so many fans along the wait for her second album, and sales dropped dramatically, where the film hardly profited at all. Had MM2 been released near it's intended date of 2017, and MM3 been released in 2019 like K-12, it wouldn't be so bad, but she's nearing 30 years old and I doubt she wants to keep up this character too far into her adulthood. Besides, it was obvious by her photography and online posts that she was already gearing up to scrap these old eras and age up her art well before K-12 was officially released. She seems to have been more than ready to start a new "brand" for herself as an artist, which may not be what her older fans are looking for, but personally I think it'll be a good move for her. We'll just have to wait and see how things move forward from here.

Why do you all think she's going to scrap this entire upcoming album when she's been planning it carefully since K-12 was still being made? I highly doubt she's thinking of giving up on or rewriting her entire vision because a relatively small portion of her fans heard some leaks, most of which may or may not even be studio ready. It would be the definition of "punishing the whole class for the actions of a few bad kids", and that just doesn't sound like something she'd do, especially at this point. If anything, she's doing best by refusing to acknowledge the MM3 leaks.

Needle and thread, Magnets, and Leeches are strong tracks for such "acoustic" sound, I'm hoping they made it onto the album. There's been a lot of people saying her best music is usually unreleased, and while I think part of it is her record label making those decisions, I also think she just doesn't think the material is very strong. She's had a habit of putting so much pressure on building such specific stories, worlds, and sound for her albums that she's scrapped anything that didn't match perfectly to her ideas. This left us with a lot of amazing leaks, but the thing is, the scrapped material was usually better than what it was replaced with, and no one wants to have to turn to leaks to find decent material. I'm hoping this new era will bring us something newer, bolder, and fully Melanie. And hopefully, one day she'll break from Atlantic Records. But until her films are finished or she's able to find funding elsewhere, I don't see that happening.

There's no effing way Moon Cycle meant to be released, lol. I just can't believe babe really made a song about being on her period that sounds like a 13 year old wrote it and actually intended it to be on a studio album. 🙄 I honestly think we got the best l*aks first with Sirens, Tunnel Vision, Leeches, etc.