MARINA – Purging Patriarchy
Marina has been at the cutting edge of intellectual/political pop for a while now, with her previous four studio albums touching on feminine ideals and the realities of certain stereotypes. Her latest single for her upcoming album fully solidifies Marina’s presence in the current pop realm as one that could be very significant in music history.
‘Purge the Poison’ is the second single for the upcoming album ‘Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land’, which is set for release on June 11 2021. The song sees Marina voice the current concerns and tragedies of the world, with lyrics referring to sexual harassment, (with a beautiful little hit at Harvey Weinstein) the Me Too movement, as well as showing solidarity for Britney vs the media.
Marina starts;
All my friends are witches and we live in Hollywood
Mystical bitches making our own sisterhood
She steps into that archaic notion of ‘hysteria’ and witch trials, reclaiming it as a sisterhood. This symbolizes safe spaces and collectives that gather to offer support to one another, such as feminist groups.
The feminist impasse of the 21st century has seen a generational divide, as well as many women ditching the label ‘feminism’ altogether. MARINA uses Mother Nature’s voice to provide a bigger picture scenario, which indicates that division isn’t the answer.
Weird Life Films, an indie production company based in Chicago, US, directed the music video for the single, which sees technicolor shots of Marina with glitchy editing that gives it a kind of B-movie kinda vibe, which I love. I also love the costume and makeup, Marina is rocking a jet black barnett with a v-shape fringe, a modern-day femme fatale. Using nostalgic Americana imagery, (Dorothy’s legs floating in a glistening pool, finding gravity as she steps down which symbolizes feminine strength) to accompany a love/hate letter to Hollywood which almost serves as the core of the erupted chaos that we’ve seen in the last few years. It’s at the cultural heart of the nation MARINA pleads with Mother Earth to forgive, for every single war. The song is very clever in its essentially a warning sign, a global summary of the past ten years, and a collective call to arms.
The album’s first single, ‘Man’s World’, released in November 2020 reintroduced Marina as an anti-patriarchal cultural queen, her eyes wide open to the state of the world and how she can use her platform to affect change.
The Pussy Riot remix on Purge the Poison was released on May 5th and invites the political punk collective into MARINA’s electropop world and wow does it work amazingly! Nadya spoke about how great it was to delve into political pop with MARINA speaking on her part which touches on ”topics of sisterhood, female and queer power, matriarchy, Christianity, and female sexuality.”
The killer chorus goes; Mother nature’s dying
Nobody’s keeping score
I don’t wanna live in a man’s world anymore
Marina appears to have used the 2020 quarantine period to truly reflect and lean in on the facts that are presented to us daily but which most of us try to ignore; global warming, systemic racism, healthcare… She is very in tune with Mother Nature and often speaks from her perspective.
I’m pretty excited to hear the album in its entirety and even more excited to check out to see her live as soon as possible!
Check back for my full album review upon ‘Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land’s release on June 11 2021