Revisiting The Family Jewels 15 Years Later
Elena Hernandez - Music Editor
Fifteen years ago, we couldn’t have predicted the soon-to-come online fascination there was with sulky, depressing, and dark art in all forms. One artist seemed to have this style down to a fine art before everyone else knew they wanted to make it themselves, pioneering the bubblegum-pop sound over macabre songwriting.
On February 15, MARINA (formally known as Marina and the Diamonds) released her debut record The Family Jewels. The record is an impressive one, with an iconically front-loaded tracklist. It features many singles like “Mowgli’s Road,” something that sounds like it came out of a childhood nightmare; “Hollywood,” a love-sick anthem about an unhealthy obsession with celebrity culture; and “Obsessions,” an ode to OCD. Marina paints a pretty picture that becomes more contemplative and messier as we listen closer.
The record’s opener “Are You Satisfied?” follows Marina’s thoughts as she finally starts the life she’s always dreamed of. She’s getting everything she’s been working towards: money, fame, and success, all at the price of perfection. “High achiever, don’t you see?/ Baby, nothing comes for free/ They say I’m a control freak driven by a greed to succeed/ Nobody can stop me.” Yet, the recognition still isn’t enough for the 24-year-old. “It’s my problem if I want to pack up and run away/ It’s my business if I feel the need to smoke, and drink, and sway/ It’s my problem, it’s my problem if I feel the need to hide/ And it’s my problem if I have no friends and feel I want to die.”
Next is “Shampain,” where Marina copes with her newly found fame by indulging in the depressant of the same name. She sings: “Drinking champagne, a bottle to myself/ Savor the taste of fabricated wealth.” My personal favorite “I Am Not A Robot” follows, and it’s about being emotionally detached from day-to-day life. She begins with, “You’ve been acting awful tough lately/ Smoking a lot of cigarettes lately/ But inside, you’re just a little baby.” Marina reminds herself and the listener that we can’t always be strong and that’s okay. “You’re vulnerable, you’re vulnerable/ You are not a robot/ You’re loveable, so loveable/ But you’re just troubled.”
In “Girls”, Marina comments on the sometimes catty nature of young women and encourages “[them] to stop being their own enemies.” Its chorus chants, “Is there any possibility/ You’ll quit gossiping about me/ To hide your insecurities? … Girls, they never befriend me/ ‘Cause I fall asleep when they speak/ Of all the calories they eat/ All they say is ‘na, na, na, na, na.”
She sings of her introversion in “The Outsider,” and the double standards of dating as a woman in “Hermit the Frog.” The latter maps Marina’s struggle with men and relationships, criticizing “how little leeway women have to express themselves and still be deemed as attractive or worthy of love.”
Even fifteen years later, the record still serves as the universal diary and coming-of-age experiences of a young woman.