Melanie Martinez Portals

Melanie Martinez is one among eccentric artists. She creates characters through her albums, in which her most popular ones are Crybaby and K-12. Four years after her album K-12 with Angelita and Crybaby being the main characters in her movie being a metaphor for dysfunctional school systems, she released Portals. The aesthetic of her past eras are doll-like and the main character’s name is Crybaby, which is meant to symbolize how as a child, Martinez felt like she wasn’t always in control of her emotions.  

Some are proud of her for this new character or era that she’s started but some think that she’s just made an unaesthetic character. On TikTok, some have compared her album to a horror movie, expressing disappointment; however some also are really intrigued by her metaphorical skills and the way she connects her stories.

Portals is described as a new era and many fans, who are already used to her making “strange” characters are still kind of surprised at this new one that came after her last song in k-12 that depicted both Angelita and Crybaby going through a portal. 

The theme of Portals is how never ending the cycle of life and death is.

Senior, Kayla Irvin says, “It definitely sounds a lot a lot different compared to like how her old music sounded and I guess it’s understandable because of how she like killed off her old persona. It’s definitely different and but I prefer her old music.”

“I think for this new album, it makes more sense for a new group of fans of Melanie Martinez to enjoy it more than her old group of fans. I feel like a completely new fanbase is going to be made along with her new character,” she says, emphasizing how disparate it appears, even though it’s supposed to be a continuation of her album k-12.

Irvin says, “I actually feel like with time her fans have grown less and less respectful and I don’t know how to feel about that.”