Marina & the Diamonds: “I’m pissed off that I’m not bigger.”
Marina & the Diamonds is pissed off that she isn’t more successful. In a new interview recorded while on tour in Australia, the British alt-pop singer vented her frustrations (with a lot of self-deprecating humor to boot) over what she feels is her lack of success, as well as the difficulty she’s had in breaking the American market.
“It had been a big year but I feel more like a failure than a success,” she tells Undercover. “I haven’t done anything I wanted to. For someone who wants to be one of the best artists of her generation, I’ve done fuck-all”.
“The Americans, I absolutely adore my fanbase there, but it has been built purely on me and my online presence,” she says. “The label haven’t really promoted me I’m afraid. It’s very difficult. It’s not really the labels fault. The pop landscape there is so difficult to penetrate and as you go into this danceworld now, dance music was quite underground for a long time in America but now because of Gaga and people like that it has been brought back. You need to be in that autotuned, pumping beats area, and I’m certainly not. And also, I’m talking about things — especially on the second record — that people won’t talk about because it’s not deemed ‘salable’ and pop, and I’m not interested [shrugs].”
“I feel pissed off I’m not bigger,” laughs Marina. “It’s funny because so many artists in the seventies and sixties they had just as much ambition as me, and they sometimes didn’t make it until their third record, and that’s OK because you develop as an artist, it’s a wonderful thing. Whereas now, it’s like if you haven’t made it by your first record it’s like ‘Oh, she’s never going to be anything’ — Not that people have actually said that about me, but it’s a very different industry now.”
After expressing her honest opinions on the music industry, Marina then delivered some exciting news by speaking up about her upcoming sophomore album.
“The second record for me is all about lyrics, and it’s quite a political record. It’s sought of a lot about feminism and sex, and it’s going to be a really abrasive pop record. It’s gonna be pop songs with lyrics that you would never ever find in another pop song.”
However, she kept quiet on who she would be collaborating with, giving off the impression that she had a few surprises in store, and also declined to provide a release date: “I don’t know if it’s going to be out next year at the end, or the year after that — until it’s good, it’ll be out when it’s good.”
And there you have it. Marina & the Diamonds, giving you the true tea!
You can check out the interview for yourself below. Also, do you think Marina deserves to be bigger, and if so will her next record be the one to do it for her?
