One-word Rating: BEBY! (MARINA’s attempt to say Baby)
What would happen if the Beatles never managed to break into the American market in the 1960’s? A generation of teenagers wouldn’t have a cultural touchstone to grow up with, musical innovations like the concept album and audio splicing wouldn’t become industry mainstays until years later, and John Lennon probably wouldn’t have moved to New York City and been brutally assassinated.
Now replace the Beatles with MARINA and the 1960’s with the 2010’s . . . do you see it?
MARINA, a Welsh singer known for her avant-garde stage persona, was one of the few musicians who found mainstream success in the United Kingdom but failed to reach the same in the United States. Whilst artists like Amy Winehouse, Adele, Jessie J, and One Direction were dominating commercially with their pop and soul sounds, MARINA’s more experimental work connected more to British sensibilities in the same way that Bjork and Kate Bush found success.
In the UK, Marina was able to rack up an impressive amount of chart appearances with singles like Hollywood (No. 12) and Oh No (No. 41) and attained a top five peak with her debut album The Family Jewels. But outside of Europe, her commercial successes were limited to the lower limits of album charts. Under the label Chop Shop Records, which handled the US distribution of her work, The Family Jewels only managed to sell 4,000 copies and peaked at No. 138. Marina attributed its relative failure to break into the mainstream on the label’s lack of promotion and audience’s tendency to listen to more dance-oriented “pumping beats” instead. Subsequent records Electra Heart (No. 31), Froot (No. 8), and Love + Fear (No. 28) fared much better with album sales, but Marina never managed to chart a single on the Billboard Hot 100.
It’s truly a shame to. Even with her penchant “weirdness” and more complex lyrical stylings, the raw talent shines through and makes for an engaging listening experience that should have resonated with the masses in the United States.
Let’s look into I Am Not a Robot, my personal favorite cut from her debut era The Family Jewels. It managed a peak of No. 26 in the UK and was commercially applauded as one of the best releases of 2010 by various news sources, but again couldn’t managed to make a dent in the Billboard Hot 100.
Why I think I Am Not a Robot is sooooooo captivating is not easy to put into words. It’s one of those songs that takes such a specific emotion and perfectly encapsulates everything about it. In this case, MARINA takes the feeling of imposter syndrome and emotional numbness and equates it to feeling robotic. On it’s own, this message isn’t exactly deep. It’s literally so literal I literally can’t believe it. But where this message is fleshed out is the bits and pieces that flesh out its broadness with specific moments that resonate. Take the lyrics:
Never committing to anything
You don’t pick up the phone when it ring, ring, rings
Don’t be so pathetic, just open up and sing
These tidbits of information on the mindset of the song’s subject, who delivers the lyrics to themselves in a way that reeks of self-reflection, hits harder than any car or football or whatever could ever hit anyone.
But the emotional depth of these words are balanced out with the whimsical and almost-silly production of the song. It begins as a simple piano accompaniment that sounds artificially real, like an electronic keyboard emulating a grand piano’s organic sound. It picks up speed and incorporates drum beats and a layered chorus of MARINA’s vocals during the pre-chorus before coming together in the chorus. Occasional strings (violins, cellos, etc.) come in at the end of the first chorus and pop in for a quick moment periodically throughout. Oh also, in the second verse comes the quirky sound effects. The first comes with the lyric:
But you are so magnetic, you pick up all the pins (piiiiing)
Yeah, now there’s a fucking xylophone in the mix. Technically it’s called a “GlOckEnSpiEl” which is just a fancy fake name for a xylophone in disguise. It adds a childlike quality to the rest of the song that pairs perfectly with the various ups and downs of MARINA’s singing. Other moments of sound effects include a recording of MARINA breathing in, laboriously and very loudly I must add, in the bridge of I Am Not a Robot to give some added ooomph to the lyric:
Can you teach me how to feel real? (oooooooooOOOOOh pause AAAAAaaaaaahhhh)
It definitely adds something. It’s one of those adlibs that you can’t help but imitating when you’re singing along to it, but it’s a little weird out of context. Honestly, the whole 3:34 second runtime of I Am Not a Robot is such a treat to try and sing to. The aforementioned range of pitches and cadences that MARINA adopts throughout the song is so easily imitated, yet difficult to hit without sounding stupid. If you wanna give an impressive display of your performing chops during karaoke night, choose I Am Not a Robot and try your best not to sound like a dying goat.
Overall, I Am Not a Robot is good. There you go, you can listen to it now that you have my approval 🙂