Three minutes and fifty seconds: “Hollywood” by Marina And The Diamonds has become one of my most-played songs this year. It is almost certainly an acquired taste: if you thought Florence Machine was an annoying fauxhemian with a ridiculous voice then you’re really going to dislike Marina Diamandis (in proper post-Gaga style, “the Diamonds” are us, her lovely fans. Aww.)
When I first heard it I thought it was extremely catchy, but the lyrics were idiotic and the singing ridiculous. I still think all those things, but for the singing at least it’s become a positive. Diamandis sings the song as if it’s a cut-up of twenty-other versions, meaning that she’s constantly embellishing a pretty good melody with diverting swoops, shifts in timbre, notes plucked at semi-random. I’d imagine to anyone who knows much about a) singing or b) writing melodies this would be irritating, but I’ve come to really enjoy it. One of her voices sounds a bit like Siouxsie Sioux, but she’s just as likely to sound like a crazed owl.
As for the lyrics, certainly they’re more problematic. The song is a supremely condescending comment on Hollywood, or America - Marina pretty much takes them as the same thing, so you can see where this is going. The central image of the song (wisely cut from the shorter single version!) is of Marina on a plane, seeing an air hostess reading a glossy magazine, then rising from her seat to confront the poor woman with the REALITY behind the SUPERFICIAL IMAGERY she’s consuming. The verse in which Marina gets ejected from the plane for this TRUTH TELLING is oddly absent.
I’ve come to quite like even this stuff though. Not that I agree with it, but I think it’s harmless, and now I’ve heard the album she’s enormously self-conscious and forthright all the way through it, which weirdly helps this particular example not stand out. And when I was her age - ha! now it’s MY turn to be condescending - I knew lots of smart people who were completely witless about American culture and would say all the usual “they don’t do irony” stuff in all seriousness. Also, one other important thing, I’m more willing to forgive Marina because of the singing, the way she’s so unafraid of making herself sound completely ridiculous. If she was making a big furrowed-brow rock record about the tawdriness of Hollywood I’d like it a lot less.
For some reason, my local alternative rock - or maybe just alternative, although they tend to play up the ‘rock’ part just as much in their promo spots/idents - station, played this song and others by Marina and the Diamonds quite a lot. It didn’t hurt that a girl I was a bit into at the time was a fan of them, but I got to quite like them. Not Florence, though - too theatrical, or theatrical in too humourless a way.
I get the problem with the America stuff, too; although possibly I know that’s still how I think some of the time! And I resolved it in pretty much the same way you did (this is where I should slide my workings over to Richard Whiteley or his replacement), but I wonder if your last line is either deliberately or consciously a dig at Arcade Fire? Is serious rock perhaps as much of a flawed characterisation as dumb pop, or - given that I’m already skating on thin ice by enjoying Robyn as a sui generis popstar - is it okay to class Marina & the Diamonds as knowingly (to different extents maybe for artist and listener) dumb pop?
