Print & Features Editor Ash Sutton attends Melanie Martinez’s Trilogy Tour, praising the singer’s performance
Friday 20th September saw american alt-pop sensation Melanie Martinez headline the Utilita Arena. Most will be aware of her from her debut album 9 years ago Cry Baby, and to be frank, it was that album alone that allured me to go to The Trilogy Tour at all.
Melanie Martinez was a staple of my early teens, I danced to Pity Party at a school show, I sat in anticipation as every new music video dropped. There was a five year break before the artist released her second album K-12 and by that point I was completely out of touch.
The Cry Baby singer is most known for her knack for turning nursery rhymes into horror stories and putting a pop spin on it. Her music tells an ongoing narrative about a young girl discovering love and bullies with a supernatural twist. The Trilogy Tour was the chance to piece each chapter of this story together and I can tell you that narrative translated effortlessly onto the stage.
I walked into the Utilita Arena with absolute childish excitement. I missed SOFIA ISELLA while I was battling for my life in the merch queue, but by the time I was in my seat the anticipation was through the roof.
[Elita’s] performance was enticing – the lead singer had a ragdoll quality about her movements and they had clearly mastered their aesthetic on stage.
Elita was the key support, a Canadian alt-rock band that performed a set that reminded me of the soundtrack of a horror video game. Their performance was enticing – the lead singer had a ragdoll quality about her movements and they had clearly mastered their aesthetic on stage. The actual music however was average, with the instrumental completely drowning out the vocals and the reverb of the guitar vibrating through my chest, it was quite easy to get both overstimulated and bored.
The main event started five minutes earlier than scheduled, the crowd rose in utter elation. We could see the projector in the background zoom into a baby’s cot while dancers dressed as bunny toys danced in the foreground. Martinez rose from a platform far behind the dancers, until it looked like she was standing in the cot. The titular song from her debut album started, the crowd screamed, and finally she came into focus on the side screens, dressed in the iconic outfit from the music video.
As we moved onto ‘Dollhouse’ and ‘Sippy Cup’ the background changed with her. Still standing on the platform, she took position in the top room of a dollhouse. My muscle memory kicked in and I was screaming along with a crowd that managed to overpower the singer herself. We then heard ‘Carousel’ as Martinez was reintroduced, sitting on one of the horses you’d see on the iconic fairground ride. As the song went on, the ride began collapsing around her, fireworks and pyrotechnics being used to sell the narrative. We were only four songs in and I was over the moon.
There were five songs left of Cry Baby by then and Martinez had joined the dancers on the main stage. We watched her destroy the stage in ‘Pity Party’ as she axed a bouquet of balloons and dance her way through ‘Mad Hatter’ before she exited the stage and we were thrown into an instrumental.
There was a beat of nothing when the dancers came back on stage, all in frilly dresses as they skipped, hopscotched and dance circle-ed until it was time for us to move into the K-12 era. Martinez rose back to stage with the K-12 Sleepaway School just behind her, now donning the dress from the album cover.
She performed a medley of ‘Wheels on the Bus’ and ‘Class Fight’ to begin which then led effortlessly into the highlights of the show.
She performed a medley of ‘Wheels on the Bus’ and ‘Class Fight’ to begin which then led effortlessly into the highlights of the show. ‘Show & Tell’ was next, which saw Martinez tied to ribbons like a puppet, the disembodied hand on the screen behind controlling her every move. She danced expertly in this puppet-style all the while her vocals not faltering once.
There was yet another stage exit as ‘Nurse’s Office’ began and the coolest stage production kicked off. The dancers’ wheeled a hospital bed onto the stage and the screens switched to an overhead cam. Martinez performed the song theatrically from the bed, singing and screaming into the lens as the lights depicted a horror trip to the nurse. By the end of the song, the tension was high, and it almost looked as if Cry Baby had died.
It was obvious by that point that this narrative had steaks, and while Cry Baby didn’t die in ‘Nurse’s Office’ the possibility was on the table. The K-12 chapter ended with ‘High School Sweethearts’ a song about young love and expectations and featured an embodiment of Cupid fluttering around on the screen behind. The dancers carried oversized loveheart sweets donning expletives as Melanie sang her heart out. The song ended with the singer getting shot in the heart by Cupid’s arrow and we knew that this time Cry Baby really was dead.
The PORTALS section of the show threw us into an astral plane. After a short but sweet but short funeral, we are introduced to The Creature, a reincarnated nymph that came from Cry Baby’s empathic abilities as she died. The album and the performances alongside it detailed the journey between life and death as The Creature battled for purity.
It was this point where I didn’t know any of the songs, so I could sit back and watch the performance in its entirety. She performed ‘DEATH’ to start as she wore a mask that gave her two sets of bug-like eyes, she gained her wings in ‘SPIDER WEB’ and battled a dragon in ‘BATTLE OF THE LARYNX’. The pace picked up in ‘NYMPHOLOGY’ and we heard Melanie Martinez address the audience for the first time in the, asking us to ‘give it up for the incredible dancers’.
We were near the end of the story. She ended with ‘WOMB’, the final song in PORTALS, and the audience were left wondering if the character of The Creature was now pregnant or if we were watching the rebirth of Cry Baby back in the mortal realm. The song ended, Martinez thanked the audience and left the stage. We were told to ‘GTFO’ by a creepy teddy bear on screen.
Martinez’s vocals were effortless the entire way through and I was utterly enamoured throughout each song.
The show was beyond expectations. Martinez’s vocals were effortless the entire way through and I was utterly enamoured throughout each song. I left certain that she was going to shoot back up to my list of favourite artists.
The UK leg of TheTrilogy Tour ends next week, so if you can make it to a show, you do not want to miss out.
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