Multi-platinum, multi-hyphenate artist Melanie Martinez returns with her fourth studio album, HADES — an 18-track descent into the psyche of our times. Is dystopia just a YA fantasy book or is it already upon us? Melanie recently joined Ross Golan on And the Writer Is… for a deep dive into the making of the album and the themes behind it. Listen HERE.
Melanie also spoke in depth with her longtime collaborator, songwriter and producer CJ Baran, on Justin Tranter’s Unfamous podcast, where the two dive into their creative partnership and process. Listen HERE.
On April 8, she will celebrate HADES with an exclusive evening at the GRAMMY Museum’s Clive Davis Theater in Los Angeles. The intimate 200-seat venue sets the stage for an in-depth conversation about her creative process, followed by a mini-live performance staged exclusively for this event. Tickets and more information are available HERE.
The album’s lead single, “POSSESSION” (her first release in three years) made an immediate impact, debuting with 2.7 million Spotify streams in its first 24 hours. The track has since surpassed 33 million global streams, including 12.5 million in the U.S. The follow-up single “DISNEY PRINCESS” continues to build momentum, amassing 11.1 million global streams to date, including 4.1 million in the U.S. Melanie recently broke down this track’s sardonic edge in an interview with Genius “Verified” — watch HERE.
On the release, Melanie shares: “‘UNCANNY VALLEY’ was the last song I wrote for HADES. The song is about how social media and AI have warped our relationship to beauty, constantly comparing ourselves to edited faces, reshaping how we look just to feel desirable, needing a filter to feel normal.
I started this album thinking I was writing a futuristic dystopia, but I realized I was just documenting the world we’re already living in. HADES is a cracked mirror. Beneath the rage, it’s a refusal to go numb – a call to feel, to see clearly, and to ask if we can still create something beautiful from the chaos we’ve been given.”