March 27 will be a day full of important releases in the world of pop, since on that date the new albums of RAYE, Robyn and Charlie Puth will be published. Added to them is Melanie Martinez’s fourth LP.
The successor to ‘PORTALS’ abandons the fantastic forest aesthetic to delve, in ‘HADES’, into gothic surrealism. In front of an ornate mirror and surrounded by melted candles, the protagonist of this new story appears.
Melanie Martinez ironically talks about female submission in ‘Possession’, the first preview of HADES, which has already reached close to 10 million views since its premiere on January 28. This is their first release since the publication of ‘PORTALS’ in 2023.
«How can he love me if he doesn’t even know who I am? I’m crying with a knife, I want to kill myself, he never treats me well”: this is how emo Martinez is in ‘Possession’, where she gives voice to a “housewife” trapped under male power. “I am your possession, you hold me like a weapon,” the singer laments over a base of saturated drums. The musical style of ‘Possession’ opts for a psychedelic pop-rock midtempo, including tremendous bells.
The chorus “gaslight me right” (“manipulate me properly”) and the hummed rhymes, very much in the childish vein of his previous work, which also evoke phrases like “And now he’s hungry, I’ll feed him candy”, lead to a disturbing revelation: “you won’t see me cry when other women come”, pointing to an already absolute emotional and sexual submission.
