Melanie Martinez makes arty, alternative singer/songwriter pop that straddles the line between folk, electronica and hip-hop. Born in Baldwin, New York, Martinez grew up listening to her father's Beatles records and hip-hop music. In 2012, while still in high school, she won a spot on NBC's The Voice with her performance of Britney Spears' "Toxic" but got eliminated during the audience vote. "Cry Baby" is Melanie Martinez's debut album released August 14th 2015.
Cry Baby debuted in the top 10 on the Billboard 200 albums chart, coming in at no. 6 with 40,000 total copies sold in its first week. The album also topped the alternative albums chart by coming in at #1.
Melanie’s music is inclined to dark pop meaning a genre of music which is upbeat with dark or gothic undertones such as twisted fantasies. All tracks in the album have this “twisted fantasies” and it is just so amazing how she and her producers have conceived “Cry Baby.”
The 13th track of this album entitled “Mad Hatter.” It is an upbeat song with a vibe different than most songs in her album. When you listen to it the first time, it kind of reminds you with Lana Del Ray’s music but when you look into it deeper, it is a very different kind of music. It is way too different. This song alludes to “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.” The lyrics are creatively crafted making the song feel like a bittersweet ear candy. It gives fuel to all the “madness” within the listeners mind and no, I do not mean mental disorders but all the fun and crazy kind of things that are inside us but we are afraid to show people because they would react negatively to all our weirdness. When I listen to this track, I feel some kind of rush and it makes me want to not resent my inner craziness and just let it out and I feel like I don’t care what people say anymore as long as I’m being myself. It all sums up to the lyrics in the chorus:
“I’m nuts. Baby, I’m mad, the craziest friend that you’ve ever had. You think I’m psycho. You think I’m gone. Tell the psychiatrist something is wrong. Over the bend, entirely bonkers. You like me best when I’m off my rockers. Tell you a secret, I’m not alarmed. So what if I’m crazy? The best people are.”
Why be Alice when you can be the Mad Hatter? When somebody calls you “crazy,” just look at them straight in the eye and say some lines from the song: So what if I’m crazy? All the best people are.
