Melanie Martinez

Melanie Martinez was originally a contestant on ‘The Voice’ season three in 2012, however after being eliminated in the fifth week she began releasing her original work which have a unique sound.

Interestingly enough, all of Melanie’s songs connect to each other and tell a story of a character that she created called cry baby. Unfortunately, her music videos do not connect the way the others on my lists do, though I have picked these three songs as they connect to each other the best.

1.Pity Party

Pity Party was slightly inspired by a Lesley Gore called It’s My Party that was released in the 1960s. The famous line of ‘It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to’ used in the chorus of Pity Party too.

Pity Party shows a girl who is sending letters to invite people to her birthday party, she is excited and dancing around but on the day of the party no one turns up. The video shows her sitting with invisible people wearing party hats and her being the clown and entertaining her stuffed animals. However, she quickly gets upset because the teddy bears aren’t alive and starts to wreck all of the decorations, rip and cut the teddy bears and smash her cake. The music video ends on her blowing out the cake that says ‘Happy Birthday Cry Baby’ in her destroyed party while the room is on fire.

The Lyrics speak of a girl wondering why no one is at her party, speculating that maybe her invitations disappeared while kicking herself for her high expectations and ‘Putting her heart on every cursive letter.’ She wonders if it was all a joke to the and that if she knew the all well it wouldn’t have happened or if she told them certain things that were going to be at the party. But in the end no one is there and she’s alone and crying and laughing and feeling line she’s dying by herself.

2.Tag, you're it

Tag you’re it starts off with Melanie as her persona Cry Baby walking out of her house that is the same as the one seen in the previous music video holding some of the ruined decorations of her party. This is what connects this music video with the last.

The music video shows her walking down the street, it then cuts to a wolf driving an ice cream truck with a knife next to him in his truck. He’s looking around the neighbourhood while stroking his knife. She goes to the grocery store and buys some things, the lady at the counter gives her something and she leaves, goes to get ice cream from the truck and he gives her a free cone but when she eats it she falls over unconscious and he picks her up, puts her in his truck and drives off. The colour of the entire video is dark or muted and both the checkout girl and wolf looks strange giving the video a dark and otherworldly feel.

The lyrics talk about a man that is driving around in a car with tinted windows trying to convince little girls to get into his car. She compares this to a deadly game of tag where he is chasing her until he catches her and pushed her down. That along with the classic ‘eenie meenie miny mo’ rhyme where she sings of catch your lady and if she screams don’t let her go puts a sick and twisted look on these children rhymes and games.

3. Milk and Cookies

Milk and Cookies Starts off in the dark, as if Melanie or ‘Cry Baby’ is just waking up in a trunk after being drugged like we had seen in the previous music video. This is how it transitions for the last video to this one even though it is not the exact ending as the previous video.

Cry Baby crawls out of the trunk and finds herself in a room with a note on the fridge that tells her that she must leave cookies on the table before three ‘OR ELSE’. It cuts back and forth from her head on a patter which gives you the idea of the or else that may happen. She loves very destressed as she makes them and it also shows the wolf that kidnapped her watching her on a screen in another room. She finds the poison that the grocery lady in the last video gave her and puts it in the cookies. When he comes in and eats them he ends up choking and she escapes.

The lyrics, like the last song, has a dark twist on a child-like theme, both with counting which is the basis of many children songs and rhymes and the ‘ashes, ashes’ line which is a part of the children’s rhyme of ring about the rosy. (Which is twisted in and of itself but don’t get me started.) She says she’s crazy and needs her prescription while asking someone if they enjoyed the cookies she has made and that they are made with sugar and poison. She also says she ‘can’t take it anymore, need to put you to bed’ then ‘Sing you a lullaby where you die at the end’ which makes it seem as if she is going to kill the person she is singing the song to.

Overall Story

Interestingly enough, all of Melanie’s songs connect to each other and tell a story of a character that she created called cry baby. Unfortunately, her music videos do not connect the way the others on my lists do, though I have picked these three songs as they connect to each other the best.

As I have said before, all of Melanie’s music connects with the next to tell a story of her persona Cry Baby but I’ll only talk about the story you get from seeing these three videos. Together these three video’s tell the story of a girl who is filled with joy and happiness, wide-eyed and naïve. She experiences her first heartbreak when she realises that she has no friends and no one comes to her party and it makes her sad and angry making her lose a little of her hope. She loses more of her hope and innocence when she was kidnapped by a man after she though he’d done something nice for her. Then when she wakes up he locks her in a room and forces her to make cookies for him while he watches. Eventually she poisons him with something that a lady gave her and smiling as he dies, even going as far as to shake him and poor milk all over him. Kind of dark, but overall as good story.