Aug 25

Aug 25 Melanie Martinez

With her signature two-toned hair, lightly freckled cheeks and deep ruby lipstick, indie-rock darling Melanie Martinez sparkles her way into our hearts the moment we lay eyes on her. Her debut album Cry Baby just debuted #5 on the charts through Atlantic Records. Here's some highlights from her upcoming feature in our debut issue, available September 15th.

On public perception & the fishbowl of fame:

"It’s definitely scary to think about that much attention on you. I want to do anything possible to get the music out there. I want everybody to hear the story of the album. But as far as me being out there in the light like that, I don’t really care so much about people caring about me. If I could, I would go back and make a secret identity. So I could just go out the grocery store like a normal person."

On The Voice & doing things her way:

"I don’t want someone to tell me how to do something that’s just art to me. With music, I feel like I have the freedom to experiment and express myself. When I was sixteen, I auditioned for The Voice, and that’s when things started moving and happening. It was crazy, I didn’t expect all this to happen. I didn’t know how else to put my stuff out there, and really go for it--and I think that The Voice helped me just figure out how to get into this."

On her collaborative writing process:

"I’ll write down a list of ideas that I have and then go into the studio and go through sounds with producers, to figure what kind of vibe I am feeling, what I want in the song. I love working with producers and just seeing where they’re at and what ideas they have. I think that’s really fun. It’s definitely a collaboration.

If I’m by myself, I obviously will write the song by myself. But even with co-writers, I’m still very lyrical. That’s my main focal point—lyrics. I love telling stories, and I love getting the point across and making sure that I can fit all of that in."

On her dream collaborator:

"I have a very small list in my head of people that I would do songs with. Right now [it would be] The Weeknd. I just think that it’d be so interesting because my music is so like "little-kid", but he’s very mature and explicit in a raunchy way, and in the hip-hip world I feel like bringing the alternative little-kid theme with him would be really weird and interesting…kinda f*cked up, but cool!"