Melanie Martinez descends into HADES with “POSSESSION,” a haunting, candy-coated unraveling of love turned lethal, and a bold declaration that the ‘Cry Baby’ era is officially buried.
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Stream: “POSSESSION” – Melanie Martinez
Welcome to Melanie Martinez’s new world order. Cry Baby is dead.
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It’s the kind of statement that lands like a velvet curtain dropping mid-performance, dramatic, deliberate, and a little bit wicked.
With “POSSESSION,” the lead single from her forthcoming fourth studio album HADES, Melanie Martinez doesn’t just signal a comeback. She stages a symbolic execution. The porcelain protagonist who defined a generation of alt-pop, Cry Baby, is officially laid to rest. What rises in her place is something sharper, colder, and far less willing to be handled.
If PORTALS closed the Cry Baby trilogy in 2023 with cosmic rebirth, “POSSESSION” feels like the reckoning that follows reincarnation. It is a candy-coated gut punch, glossy on the surface, bruising underneath, and it reintroduces Martinez not as a character, but as an architect of power dynamics. The multi-platinum, multi-hyphenate global alt-pop phenomenon returns with razor-sharp lyricism tucked inside melodies that glimmer like lacquered glass. The sweetness is deliberate. So is the sting.
I hit my head real hard,
I woke up in a jar
On top of his blue metal
shelf full of trinkets
He’d dust me off each day,
I’m made of porcelain clay
I feed him kisses
so I don’t break down to pieces
The track opens suspended in the air: A breathy, springy synth that feels as though it’s been exhaled rather than played. Martinez’s voice floats ghostlike over the top, intimate and almost disembodied. There is a studied fragility in these opening seconds, a minimalism that resists the algorithmic urge for instant gratification. Instead, she draws the listener inward. The effect is eerie but comforting, theatrical yet hushed. Vulnerability has always been part of her aesthetic, but here it feels weaponized, soft as porcelain, sharp as the cracks running through it.
And now he’s hungry,
I’ll feed him candy
You’re screamin’ at me loud,
screamin’ at me loud,
screamin’ at me loud
On “POSSESSION,” Martinez tackles the harrowing terrain of domestic abuse with unsettling composure.
“He leaves me all alone, from dusk to f**in’ dawn / I’ll clean up after all his s**, I’m the housekeeper,” she sings, her tone nearly detached. Later: “He comes home drunk at night, of course, he picks a fight, I try my best to bite my tongue, but it keeps bleedin’.” The lines are blunt, almost diaristic, yet delivered within a sonic fairytale. That contrast, brutality dressed in a lullaby, is where Martinez thrives.
As the song unfolds, grime-tinged drums creep in, introducing a pulse that feels like a nervous system flickering to life. The percussion never overwhelms. Instead, it hums beneath the surface, a low-voltage tension that keeps the track coiled. This is not explosive rage. It is sustained pressure. The softness and grit coexist in uneasy harmony, creating emotional tension rather than sonic aggression. Every production choice feels intentional, restrained, breathing.
Vocally, Martinez manipulates distance like a cinematographer adjusting focus. In the first verse, her delivery is murky, slightly buried in the mix, heightening the dissociative atmosphere. She sounds like she’s singing from inside the jar she describes, contained, decorative, fragile. When the chorus hits, her voice snaps into clarity. Suddenly, she is front and center, crystalline and direct: “Baby, I’m your possession, handle me like a weapon.” The shift is striking. It gives the chorus a strangely infectious quality, even as its message remains deeply unsettling.
Baby, I’m your possession,
handle me like a weapon
Gaslight me right, tell me, “Keep quiet”
I’ll go along, di-di-dum
Put me up like a prize, I’ll be a good housewife
You won’t see me cry when women come by
I’ll go along, di-di-dum
That line, “handle me like a weapon,” crystallizes the song’s thesis. Love becomes ownership. Intimacy morphs into control. In Martinez’s universe, affection can be indistinguishable from domination. The lyrics thread through objectification and domestic performance with chilling precision: Waking up “in a jar,” displayed “on his blue metal shelf full of trinkets,” dusted daily like porcelain clay. She feeds him kisses so she doesn’t “break down to pieces.” Care becomes strategy. Sweetness becomes survival.
There is satire embedded in the compliance. “Put me up like a prize, I’ll be a good housewife,” she croons, skewering the romanticized image of obedience. The repetition of “You’re screamin’ at me loud” mimics the relentless churn of verbal abuse, while “Gaslight me right” nods to psychological manipulation with disarming frankness. Martinez does not dramatize the violence; she normalizes its absurdity. That normalization is the horror.
And yet, even amid the darkness, she laces the track with whimsy. The post-chorus dissolves into playful, almost childish syllables, “Dum, dum, di di dum”, like a nursery rhyme echoing through a cracked dollhouse. It functions as a mask, a performative innocence layered over trauma. This warped fairytale quality has long been a Martinez signature, but here it feels more refined than ever. Less costume, more mood. Less spectacle, more atmosphere.
The second verse deepens the claustrophobia. Abandonment from “dusk to f**in’ dawn.” Emotional labor framed as housekeeping. Fights rendered inevitable, “of course he picks a fight.” The most devastating line might be the quietest: “I try my best to bite my tongue, but it keeps bleedin’.” Silence, for Martinez, is not peace. It is damage deferred.
Then comes the fracture. “How could he love me if he won’t see me?” she asks, exposing the core wound: Invisibility. The bridge edges toward collapse, “I’m crying with a knife, wanna take my life,” before the outro veers into ambiguous escape. “Took the keys and left, drove into a tree.” Whether literal or symbolic, the act reads as a rupture. A concussion that “reversin’ all the damage I had” suggests violent clarity. It may be bruised, but it’s not that bad. Hurt, but no longer owned.
Took the keys and left, drove into a tree
Walked around for a minute, people starin’ at me
A concussion reversin’ all the damage I had
May be bruised, but it’s not that bad
As a lead single, “POSSESSION” is a confident tonal declaration for HADES.
It does not rely on bombast. It does not chase virality. Instead, it trusts its atmosphere, hazy, unsettling, precise. If Cry Baby represented wounded innocence navigating a hostile world, HADES appears poised to explore the underworld that follows. Not rebirth, but reckoning. Not fantasy, but the machinery beneath it.
Fans have already begun proclaiming it their album of the year, and the rest of the HADES tracklist remains tantalizingly concealed. But if “POSSESSION” is any indication, Martinez is doubling down on control, of mood, of narrative, of her own mythology. She is no longer the doll on the shelf. She is the hand rearranging the room.
Cry Baby is dead.
Long live the architect of HADES.
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