Album: “K-12” by Melanie Martinez
Release Date: Sep. 6, 2019
Run time: 46 minutes
Label: Atlantic Records
Grade: B+
Melanie Martinez has been silent for the last four years, but her sophomore album, “K-12,” is anything but. Since gaining fame from her 2012 appearance on “The Voice,” Martinez released her debut album “Crybaby” in 2015 to positive reviews. Much like her first album, "K-12" sees Martinez using her songwriting skills to tell a cohesive story from the first track to the last.
“K-12” offers a different view into the dark mind of Martinez. While “Crybaby” gave listeners a unique combination of songs about things we associate with children and grownup themes that transcend their title’s meaning, like “Sippy Cup,” “Training Wheels” and “Mrs. Potato Head,” “K-12” gives us that same combination in a high school setting with tracks titled “Wheels On the Bus,” “Detention” and “High School Sweethearts.”
The first track on the album, “Wheels On the Bus,” starts with the titular tune we are all familiar with, but the lyrics soon take a mature turn with Martinez singing, “Counting trees as they pass me by/And I’m trying not to look across the aisle/‘Cause Maya’s letting Dan put his hand up her skirt.”
While these lyrics are dark and harsh, this is the type of songwriting for which Martinez is known. She calls attention to things we have either experienced first or secondhand or seen in TV shows and movies.
With a theme that echoes the song “Mrs. Potato Head” from Martinez’s first album, “Orange Juice” dives into the harmful obsession of looking perfect, which can lead to the development of an eating disorder. The first verse ends with the lines, “Shoving clementines and orange bacteria/Down your throat a dozen times or near, yeah/Fooling those around of your bulimia.” The chorus then picks up with Martinez singing, “Your body is imperfectly perfect/Everyone wants what the other one’s working.”
The second to last track from the album is “High School Sweethearts.” This song starts with Martinez singing the chorus passionately over a soft organ chord about the pressures of being high school sweethearts. She begins the first verse with, “Step one/You must accept that I’m a little out my mind/Step two/This is a waste if you can’t walk me down the finish line.” Like most of Martinez’s songs, this one begins nice and easy, but ends with jolting lyrics, forcing you to pay attention.
Martinez is not trying to create the next catchy tune that lands on the Top 40 list because it sounds like all the other songs. She is writing music that means something because most people have had some sort of experience with these topics. This album is not about how much fun prom was, or how everyone got along and went to football games together. This album is only about the parts of high school no one talks about. We all rode that school bus with the kids who smoked weed in the back. We all tried to find our high school sweethearts. We all had fake friends who we talked to when we had no one else.
Martinez is a master at turning cute and cheeky song titles into severe and innuendo-ridden lyrics about real-world struggles. Her ability to create great music that carries her heavy lyrics is what makes her such a strong artist. Even though this album takes us back to some high school memories, not all memories are good memories.