In an interview with Pop Justice, Marina describes the album’s vapid fame-grab as the “antithesis” of her beliefs, claiming the project was her way of belying the idea of celebrity: “The whole idea, the whole notion of pop culture and especially pop music is all based on an illusion … I’m so against it that I almost have to play the part,” Marina said.
#FIGHT AESTHETIC TUMBLR TV#
To this day, without really searching for it, one can find reblogged stills and edits across Tumblr from Marina’s “Primadonna'' video, where she spins around in a pink nightgown as static runs across retro TV sets.Įlectra Heart is an album about artifice: scattered between its bubblegum choruses and smooth cadences are shallow motives, two-faced lovers, and plastic pop-personas. Though her later projects lacked staying power, 2012’s Electra Heart was an instant hit: gif-ready in a way few albums have been since. Marina (formerly Marina and The Diamonds) followed suit in a similar fashion. With charged vintage callbacks and a thinly veiled death wish, Lana crafted a sepia-toned dreamscape where listeners could safely live out their femme-fatale fantasies. Most users were at an age where serious romantic encounters were rare, and the only love they were prepared to give was puppy-like adoration. And her lyrics, especially “We were born to die” and “Sometimes love is not enough,” eclipsed all other 'sadcore' image quotes. Gifs of the singer in her rose flower crown - while sitting in a throne near two live tigers - spread to every corner of the site. The single joined 11 other tracks on 2012’s hugely successful Born to Die, which was panned by critics who accused the singer of glamorizing one-sided relationships and female submission. Like early Tumblr users, Lana had a fixation with imagining the near past as a time of glamour and possibility, one superior to today’s way of living. Looking forlorn in a Priscilla Presley updo, Del Rey crashed the blogosphere with the debut of her 2011 single, "Video Games." In retrospect, the music video seemed perfectly crafted for Tumblr consumption: shots of Del Rey mournfully singing flashed between clips from Betty Boop-era cartoons and slice-of-life Super 8 reels of strangers. The blogs need to eat, after all - and before she was concerned with victimizing herself and potentially infecting her fans, Lana Del Rey was ready to serve.
Often, these posts would feature a single typographic message over the image - something bleak and vague like, “I thought we had plans.” For a musician to do well on Tumblr, they would need to embody these sentiments and play off the visuals of the digital age. Grainy photos of teens fared well so did saccharine edits of early internet hallmarks: desktop monitors melting in neon, a pastel Hello Kitty edition of MS Paint. As a predominantly young, femme, and queer space, Tumblr accrued a distinct aesthetic well before the Big Three started circulating the blogs in force. And of the most influential artists at the time, only three had this corner of the web in an undeniable chokehold: Marina, Lana Del Rey, and Arctic Monkeys.įor every era, adolescence has a look not so much a coded language teens use to vet who’s 'in,' but an expression of an underlying mood. Music was inseparable from the early Tumblr scene, both shaping and reinforcing its aesthetic. This might explain why you’ve been getting jumped by that black-and-white photo of a bedroom wall lined with records circa 2013 - Lorde’s Pure Heroine and The 1975’s self-titled album are standouts here - recently on Twitter, or seeing friends post about which indie pop albums they’re revisiting. Either way, after the hyper nightmare of this past year, many are desperate for a simpler time if the past we’re reliving isn’t too distant, it’s all the more comforting. In 2021, this internet moment is having something of a comeback, or maybe we’re regressing, as veterans of the era believe. It’s only 2014, and nothing feels unbearable. Whatever resonates with you and your "aesthetic," you reblog yet again. On your feed, users with names like and reblog images that radiate a syrupy loneliness: teens in knee-high socks and pleated skirts smoking cigs, song lyrics laid over an empty '80s mall landscape. Nailing this look feels super important, for some unknown reason. If you were online back then, life might’ve gone something like this: you roll out of bed during summer break and begin hardcoding your personal blog - tinkering with a script that’ll add a glitter effect to its baby pink background. Before the internet was a magnifying glass for the world’s ugliness, there was Tumblr.
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