Incredibly, implausibly and – let’s face it – improbably, Marina Diamandis is still duking it out on the Necessary Evil countdown.
This was going to be it: This was going to be the year that an artist that had become a feature of this annual countdown since almost its inception finally fell off the list. An artist that first burst into my consciousness in 2009 with the almost impossibly good debut hat-trick of singles (The outstanding Obsessions!! The immaculate I’m Not a Robot!! The mmmmm-decent Mowgli’s Road!!) that I was even moved to declare them an “Almost impossibly good debut trio of singles from the Welsh/Greek singer who seems all set to become Britain’s most interesting pop star when her (inevitably crushingly disappointing) debut album is released early in 2010”,.
That “inevitably crushingly disappointing” finally landed in 2010’s top 10 albums and… yeah, it wasn’t disappointing as such, but far from the one piece of art that would save my life and unite the world against the creeping danger of far right horrors that were currently threatening the world (David Cameron had recently said that black fathers needed to stop abandoning their families, which was the most bigoted and incendiary thing you could imagine a world leader saying*). However, it sounded like it would be the start and a long and fruitful career that would eventually be listed amongst the greats**. Personally, I don’t think anything Marina has done since has been as good as that ‘disappointing’ debut album. She reached a nadir with 2019’s excretable ‘Love + Fear‘ – probably the worst record ever released by a Necessary Evil Gold Star Artist – and although I was giddy enough to list the follow up as 2021’s 24th best album of the year, I always recognised, secretly, that I only went so big on it because, hey, at least it isn’t fucking ‘Love + Fear’!!*** Her fifth album is a pretty huge improvement on ‘Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land’, but this ain’t 2021 no more, sunshine! There’s simply too much legitimately great stuff this year (Shaun fucking Ryder was #25 in 2021. Yes, that Shaun Ryder) and I knew I’d already be sacrificing many Necessary Evil Sacred Cows this year, so I was already writing the poor woman’s obituary in my head.
Then I went back to the album a few weeks ago and, yeah, it’s pretty good. #40 with a bullet.
(*I’m writing this a day or so after Donald Trump’s unhinged and grammatically rogue late night rant on Thanksgiving, essentially promising public executions for any non-white American citizen that can’t recite the lyrics to We Are Charlie Kirk when compelled to by an ICE agent. Unbelievably, I think this latest onset of verbal giardiasis might actually be too racist for even America! I know, I honestly believe that line exists. We’ll see I guess, and those of us in the 95.78% can at least console ourselves that the complete downfall of the USA might not be the worse thing in the world.
**”With slightly better self-control her second album has the potential to be a classic” I said at the time. She actually went far more bonkers with the follow-up, and created what many would consider her career best. It was when she started to second guess her own creativity that things started to fall apart
***I hate that album so much that I have been on occasion been moved to argue with completely random people online about it. Honestly, on the r/MarinaAndTheDiamonds subreddit, every cocking day someone will post an “Ackshuallyyyy. lOvE + fEaR iS rEaLlY gOoD” and I just… can’t. No it isn’t, you fucking imbecile!! Yeah, everyone else there is a teenage girl, so what? Listen, I don’t drink, what else am I supposed to do on on those long dark nights of the soul?)
Hi, welcome back, that was a lot of footnotes. Just to get you back up to speed, I’d like to confirm that we are still talking about MARINA’s 2025 album ‘Princess of Power’ (BMG Rights Management (UK) Limited; 47:39). I was also leaving a lot of subliminal messages to get you to join the Communist Party and enact violent revolutionary struggle, but I’m pretty sure they’ll all still be present.
‘Princess of Power’ (or ‘POP’. Do you get that? Do you? Do you get it?) is definitely Marina’s most fun and entertaining album in some time, one that doesn’t ever sound like it was a massive slog to record and by extent becomes a massive slog to get through. It’s a very loose concept album, involving learning to love the experience of love itself, while all mildly centred round the themes of a video game that I guess is meant to signify the ‘game’ of love and affection that you should mature enough to enjoy like you were fending off a hoard in Helldivers 2. The album’s final track is called FINAL BOSS and includes the cringeworthy statement “Finish him! Thank you, Mario, but our princess is in another castle”, which – Jesus Christ – is just the kind of cringe boomer reference you’d get from someone who can’t even name a video game released after 1995.
But I’ve always kind of liked that about Marina! The fact that she seemingly can’t help but add these completely embarrassing little asides and dumb references into otherwise perfect little pop songs is what makes her special! Much like her compatriots The Manics, there’s always an underlying naffness to Marina that makes her all the more endearing. Back in 2010, I was mistakenly requesting that Marina shave off these rough edges – maybe imagining ‘Love + Fear’ in an ultimate example of being careful what you wish for (did I mention that I fucking hate that album?) – but she’s always at her best when she leans in to such nonsense and doesn’t ever second guess her own bizarre creativity.
Unlike the Manics though, Marina isn’t assured of an eternal place on this list because of how much she meant to me when I was 13 years old – there’ll be no 34,229 word essay on why ‘Froot’ is actually the greatest album of all time in 2046 – so the poor woman has to make it onto this list on her own merits 😱. This year was a perfect encapsulation of this: ‘POP’ is a massive improvement on Marina’s previous album, and probably her best in a decade… but the rest of the field has just improved so much that she’s struggling to keep up.
Can you guess what artist are #39?
2021 #24; 2019 #79; 2015 #37; 2010 #8 (-16)
Yeah, Metacritic has become a more and more impossible website to use, especially if you’re trying to search for music, so I’ve switched to using the Album of the Year website this year to garner the opinions of the great unwashed. I’ll also be able to use user scores if the album is too cool for reviewers. Will it fuck up the average a bit? Sure, but let me worry about blank. Considering the users didn’t really like ‘POP’ either (rating: 66 – “marina, you have effectively transitioned from gay pop to gay slop”), it might still work out.
Necessary Evil 