Album: Marina - Princess of Power

Marina Diamandis is a proper pop star, brilliantly full-on, off on her own thing. The Welsh singer is primarily known for success 10-15 years ago as Marina and the Diamonds, but she’s retained global heft as an album artist, including in the US, where she now lives (she played Coachella this year). Her last album was 2021’s enjoyably unfettered Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land.

Princess of Power is even more over-the-top, pushing sex-positive girl-power themes further. It’s a welcome counterpoint to contemporary trip-hop-ish “sad girl pop”.

Marina 2025 is, perhaps, best summed up by the fabulous and outrageously-titled single “Cuntissimo”, a brash, frenetic, femme-centric electro-pop banger, which joyfully affirms her belief in herself (“I’m a star! I’m a star! I’m a star!”), and living life by your own rules (“Salma Hayek in the sun/Louise and Thelma on the run/Your ex is hitting you up/But you no longer give a fuck”).

Diamandis is unafraid of the preposterous. With her light operatic soprano voice and her guilelessly forthright lyrics, there’s a cinematic musical theatre element, like a cross between Lady Gaga, M3GAN and “Starship Troopers”-era Sarah Brightman. The kitsch can become overwhelming, as on “Hello Kitty”, the sugar-pumped saccharine of “I <3”, or the Autotune skank of “Digital Fantasy”. Undoubtedly, Princess of Power will be too much for many.

But those up for the ride will revel. She’s in a horny mood throughout, notably on the “Hollaback Girl”-clappy “Rollercoaster”, which proclaims her desire to have sex on sand and grass (“spread me like a picnic on the floor in the forest”) and the juddering dancefloor opus “Cupid’s Girl”. But, as usual, she’s in no mood to suffer male foolishness and keen to share snippets of her inner self, as on the techno-pop nursery rhyme “Everybody Knows I’m Sad”.

“Try my best to act my age,” she sings on reverbed piano slowie “Adult Girl”, “but the child won’t behave/She wants to scream and cry and rage/And who am I to dig her grave?” Who indeed! Marina’s work, for all its colourful melodrama, feels real, a psychotherapeutic work-out attached to gorgeously overblown tunes, many of which have dancefloor stomp. Princess of Power showcases a pop one-off on her usual bewitching form.

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Below: Watch the video for "Cuntissimo" by Marina