It’s ironic that New York musician Melanie Martinez first found fame as a 17-year-old on the US version of The Voice, where judges first assess you on the basis of that quality alone. Over a decade on, her breathy, babygirl singing is the least striking thing about a music career that has put everything into the visual.
She always looked unusual, with gap teeth and a split-screen hairdo, but the look became ever more cartoonish and her videos were never less than immaculately outlandish. By 2019 and her second album, K-12, she had graduated to writing, directing and starring in a full-length accompanying movie, which mixed pastel schoolgirl cutesiness with the dark and surreal.
