In an interview with Rolling Stone, Marina described her sixth album as a lesson in learning how to love again: “It can sound trite, but the ability to love is so powerful and brave. … [Princess of Power] is about teaching yourself—or re-teaching yourself—how to love.” Like most Marina albums post-FROOT, the Welsh pop star’s latest is rich in empowerment anthems that chart a metamorphosis from the despondent damsel of “Everybody Knows I’m Sad” to the courageous heroine of the title track and “Cuntissimo.” Inspired by the rhapsodic disco pop of ABBA and Kylie Minogue, Princess of Power moves with a clean, steady chug, but its dichotomy of feminine softness vs. strength comes off depressingly two-dimensional. The one-size-fits-all tracks feel like they rolled off a conveyor belt and the writing sometimes tips into childlike cliché.
Like any disco-pop album, Princess of Power is preoccupied with dancing and fun. The opening title track breaks out of Rapunzel’s tower to enter a Venusian disco haven; it’s practically a Barbie B-side. “I <3 You” is a straightforward disco sparkler updated with shades of Magdalena Bay, CSS, and Madonna’s “Vogue.” Among the album’s many ’70s- and ’80s-inspired tracks, the liberation anthem “Rollercoaster” stands out mostly because it sounds a bit like Sleigh Bells: Over a booming bleachers stomp, Marina daydreams about skinnydipping, sex on the beach, and getting high off kisses.
Princess of Power bears some similarity to Diamandis’ beloved concept record Electra Heart, which used female archetypes (like “Homewrecker” or frustrated housewife) to explore contemporary womanhood. But like key moments on that album, Princess of Power can sound incredibly overproduced. Maximalism is Marina’s preferred method, and it’s worked in the past: “Lies” staged a breakup like a Greek tragedy, smashing together tidal waves of synth while Marina wailed about a lover’s failures. Princess of Power never quite hits that impassioned high. “Final Boss” repurposes the 8-bit pirouettes from earlier track “Digital Fantasy,” then throws in a Kylie-esque rap segment and a Mortal Kombat sample. Before the final chorus, a pitched-up chipmunk voice squeaks: “Thank you Mario, but our princess is in another castle!” The effect is more gimmicky than clever as video-game metaphor overpowers emotional meaning.
Near the album’s end comes “Adult Girl,” a spiritual sequel to Electra Heart’s “Teen Idle,” where a younger Marina yearned for an ideal (yet artificial) teenage dream. “Adult Girl” is exponentially bleaker. Over plinking piano like tears on cobblestone, Marina laments stolen youth. “Didn’t grow up in a normal world,” she sings, “and now I’m just an adult girl.” It’s sad to hear, though perhaps not in the way intended. Marina’s “Adult Girl” sounds resigned to her fate as a 39-year-old teenager, a lonely echo of a culture where adolescence seems to last indefinitely. But the song inspires more sympathy than empathy: You want better for her, particularly when, between coquette-as-trend and the “I’m just a girl”-ing of every minor inconvenience, we’re already surrounded with suggestions that real women are supposed to be too naive and incapable to function.
Princess of Power’s synthetic sound and overwrought wordplay smooth out the distinct tonal registers that ought to separate a weepy ballad like “Adult Girl,” a character-building nursery rhyme like “Butterfly,” and an aspiring kitsch artifact like “Cuntissimo.” According to Marina, being cuntissimo involves bottles of bubbly and ignoring your ex’s “U up?” texts. But haven’t we heard this before, and in a better song? “Cuntissimo” charges ahead anyway with revved-up faux-Italo synths, baroque strings, and a ballroom neologism that lands like an accidental satire on 2020s pop. “Do people still say YOLO?” she wonders aloud. Even at its most outrageous, Princess of Power suffers less from silliness than from safeness.
