100 Fun Facts About Melanie Martinez

What inspired the name of Cry Baby, Melanie Martinez's alter ego and debut album?

Her childhood nickname. She was called a cry-baby for being so emotional, and has said that building the character was her way of turning the insult into a compliment.

Which Britney Spears song did Melanie Martinez sing for her blind audition on The Voice?

Toxic. She sang her own arrangement while strumming an acoustic guitar and keeping time on a tambourine with her feet.

Which coach did Melanie Martinez choose on The Voice?

Adam Levine. He lost his whole team in one night when she and Amanda Brown, his last two singers, were voted off together.

In which New York City borough was Melanie Martinez born?

Queens. She was born in its Astoria neighbourhood, but her family left the city for Long Island when she was four, and that is where she grew up.

Melanie Martinez's parents are of which two heritages?

Dominican and Puerto Rican. She never learned Spanish, though, and has said the one piece of advice she would give her younger self is to be more eager to learn it.

What was Melanie Martinez's debut single, released in February 2014?

Dollhouse. Fans paid for its video through an Indiegogo campaign, and her friends did the filming, hair and makeup.

Melanie Martinez compared one of her songs, about a picture-perfect but dysfunctional home, to which film?

Edward Scissorhands. She meant its rows of perfect homes and lawns that all look alike while hiding troubled families, and Tim Burton, who made it, is the film-maker she dreams of working with.

Which record label signed Melanie Martinez in April 2014?

Atlantic. Its chairman, Julie Greenwald, recalled her walking in with a video she had already made by calling in every favour she could, and said it was 'all her vision'.

Which song from Melanie Martinez's debut EP was featured in a trailer for American Horror Story: Freak Show?

Carousel. She had her manager pitch it as soon as she heard the season would have a carnival theme, then heard nothing for nearly a year until it turned up in the trailer.

In 'Mrs. Potato Head', Melanie Martinez uses a toy with a swappable face as a metaphor for what?

Plastic surgery. She pictured pulling the toy's features off and rearranging them, and wrote the song about feeling pressured to change your looks to fit a standard.

Which Lesley Gore hit does Melanie Martinez sample on the lead single from Cry Baby?

It's My Party. She wrote 'Pity Party' around it with songwriter Kara DioGuardi in one quick session, then had to wait to learn whether the sample could be cleared for release.

What came packaged with early physical copies of Melanie Martinez's Cry Baby?

A storybook. Illustrated by Chloe Tersigni, it tells the album's story, and Martinez says she had to fight her label to give it to every early buyer, not just a limited edition.

Which Cry Baby track did Melanie Martinez call 'the second part' of her song 'Dollhouse'?

Sippy Cup. She called it the bridge between her first EP and the album, a look at what really goes on in the kitchen of Cry Baby's family home.

Which song's video closed Melanie Martinez's Cry Baby visual story in September 2017?

Mad Hatter. She called the effects-heavy clip 'the finale' of the album, and it completed her promise to make a video for every one of its songs.

Which two Melanie Martinez songs shared a double-feature music video in August 2016?

Tag, You're It and Milk and Cookies. The songs sit back to back on the album, and the video joins them into one story in which Cry Baby is abducted by a big bad wolf who drives an ice-cream truck.

Which 2015 Melanie Martinez song went viral on TikTok in 2020 through a Timothée Chalamet fan edit?

Play Date. A slow-motion clip of the actor in Call Me by Your Name set off a wave of copycat celebrity edits, and the five-year-old track pulled Cry Baby back up the Billboard 200.

Which song did Melanie Martinez post on SoundCloud as a Christmas present to fans in December 2015?

Gingerbread Man. She says it was never meant to be a single, but fans asked for it on iTunes and Spotify, so it got a full release weeks later.

What was the name of the fragrance Melanie Martinez released in 2016?

Cry Baby Perfume Milk. The milk is in the packaging: the scent looks milky white but sprays on clear, and it comes in a vintage-style baby bottle with a rubber top.

Which cosmetics brand released Melanie Martinez's 'Cry Baby' blue and 'Teddy Bear' brown lipsticks?

Lime Crime. The electric blue shade was inspired by the colour of a cartoon tear, and it went on sale the same week as the album it was named after.

Which platform partnered with Melanie Martinez to premiere her 90-minute film K-12 online in 2019?

YouTube. The film passed a million views in its first nine hours there, and the platform followed it with a companion mini-series set in the same world.

Besides writing and starring in it, what was Melanie Martinez's other top-billed job on the film K-12?

Director. It was her first feature behind the camera, and she has described the 31-day shoot as sleepless, with 3 a.m. call times, yet says it left her determined to do it again.

In Melanie Martinez's film K-12, what is the name of Cry Baby's best friend?

Angelita. Played by Emma Harvey, she is the one classmate as willing as Cry Baby to use her magic powers openly, which gets the pair shunned by the other pupils.

In Melanie Martinez's film K-12, what does Cry Baby discover the principal is doing to students?

Medicating them to control them. His staff are in on it too: in one dance number the school nurses drug and restrain Cry Baby, using their stretchers as props.

In Melanie Martinez's film K-12, which song has Cry Baby strung up as a puppet in front of her class?

Show & Tell. The song is about fame being less glamorous than it looks, so a teacher works Cry Baby's strings while her classmates clap, laugh and cheer for more.

Which 2020 single was the first Melanie Martinez song to feature another artist?

Copy Cat. Rapper Tierra Whack guests on it, and it was announced as a taste of her next EP, yet it was missing from the track list when that EP finally came out.

What is the title of the 2020 EP that Melanie Martinez released as a deluxe extension of K-12?

After School. She set out to add three bonus songs and ended up with seven, and called the result more personal, a step outside the Cry Baby character for a moment.

Melanie Martinez opened Australian shows in January 2016 for which American Idol runner-up?

Adam Lambert. He lost the 2009 final to Kris Allen but went on to tour the world singing lead with Freddie Mercury's old bandmates, and Martinez warmed up the crowds on his own Original High Tour.

How did Melanie Martinez start teasing her album Portals in February 2023?

Archiving all her Instagram posts. With her old look cleared away, she posted teasers of eggs incubating in a forest, then announced the album with a clip of herself hatching from one.

What form does Melanie Martinez's alter ego take in her Portals era?

A pink, four-eyed fairy creature. It bursts out of a giant egg in the album's announcement video, and Martinez wore the full facial prosthetics on stage as well as on screen.

Which two Portals singles gave Melanie Martinez her first Hot 100 entries with her own songs?

Death and Void. They reached numbers 95 and 61 in spring 2023, and until then her only Hot 100 entries had been two cover versions from her 2012 run on The Voice.

Whose album kept Melanie Martinez's Portals from topping the Billboard 200?

Morgan Wallen. Portals had the biggest opening week of her career, 142,000 units, but his One Thing at a Time held the top spot for a fifth week and left her at number two.

Which track closes Melanie Martinez's Portals, an album that opens with 'Death'?

Womb. Martinez says the album starts at death, ends at the womb and is meant to be played as a forever loop, the way she pictures lives ending only to begin again.

Which Portals video earned Melanie Martinez an MTV VMA nomination for Best Visual Effects?

Void. In the video she emerges from a beating heart and dances in front of a giant eye, in a world its effects studio says is almost entirely computer-generated.

What was the name of the 2024 tour that took Melanie Martinez into arenas for the first time?

The Trilogy Tour. Fans had asked why her previous tour played only the newest album, so this one gave each of her three records an act of its own.

Which new character did Melanie Martinez introduce for her 2026 album Hades?

Circle. A teaser presented her as a new pop star out of 'Hades Tech' who had been extracted from a secluded cult.

What was the lead single from Melanie Martinez's 2026 album Hades?

Possession. She announced it only a day before it came out, ending an almost three-year wait for new music with a rock-edged song about power passed off as love.

Melanie Martinez named which album as the utopian counterpart to her 2026 release Hades?

Elysium. She revealed the title live on the Today show three months after Hades came out, having planned the pair as one dystopian record and one utopian record.

Melanie Martinez says she writes songs as a storyteller because her father always played which band?

The Beatles. Her father mixed their records with a lot of hip-hop, and she credits Biggie Smalls for the other half of her sound, the heavy beat under the story.

How did Melanie Martinez learn to play guitar at fourteen?

Teaching herself from chord diagrams. Her father had always wanted to play but never learned, so when she showed an interest he bought her a guitar and she looked up the chords to songs she liked.

Which fellow musician did Melanie Martinez date from 2019 to 2020?

Oliver Tree. She said they ended things by mutual decision and stayed on good terms, and she posted a heartbroken tribute when he died in a helicopter crash in 2026.

What visual signature has Melanie Martinez been known for since her early career?

Two-toned hair with bangs. At sixteen she watched 101 Dalmatians, told her mother she would dye her hair like Cruella de Vil, and did it; her mother didn't speak to her for a week.

K-12 earned Melanie Martinez a Top Soundtrack nomination at the 2020 Billboard Music Awards, but which film's album won?

Frozen II. Those awards are settled by sales, streams and airplay rather than a jury, and her school musical was up against three Disney soundtracks plus Mötley Crüe's The Dirt.

Melanie Martinez was raised from the age of four in which Long Island town?

Baldwin. She was still at its high school when The Voice made her famous, and she says she was booed at her graduation by schoolmates who thought TV had changed her.

Which art form did Melanie Martinez show off to host Carson Daly when her blind audition aired on The Voice?

Photography. A high-school teacher had told her she had a good eye, and she planned to enrol at a visual arts school in New York City if the audition went badly.

Which rock anthem did Melanie Martinez cover on The Voice in 2012, sending her into the Billboard Hot 100?

Seven Nation Army. Her version of the White Stripes song reached number 86, and it would be more than a decade before one of her own songs joined it on the Hot 100.

Melanie Martinez finished in the top six of The Voice's third season, which was won by which singer?

Cassadee Pope. The former frontwoman of pop-punk band Hey Monday won by switching to pop-country songs, two weeks after Martinez was voted off.

Melanie Martinez shot her musical film K-12 on location in which European capital?

Budapest. Her story of an American-style school was filmed in Hungary over 31 days, and one location was Eszterháza, a rococo palace nicknamed the Hungarian Versailles.

Which Portals song, a kiss-off to an ex, did Melanie Martinez release as a single in November 2023?

Evil. The title is the insult she expects for walking away from a manipulative partner, and the song shrugs it off: if leaving makes her the villain, so be it.

What phrase was carved into a mushroom in Melanie Martinez's first teaser video for Portals?

RIP Crybaby. The carving was her farewell to the alter ego she had played across two albums and a film, while a snippet of a new song announced that she was back from the dead.

Which children's song lends its tune and title to the opening track of Melanie Martinez's album K-12?

The Wheels on the Bus. Martinez keeps the nursery tune's innocence but sets it against a rowdy, far-from-innocent ride to school, a contrast that sets the scene for the whole album.

Which Disney villain inspired the look Melanie Martinez adopted at sixteen after watching a 1996 live-action film?

Cruella de Vil's style in 101 Dalmatians struck Martinez so much at sixteen that she copied it. The look stuck, and she became known for it.

Which filmmaker did Melanie Martinez name as a major influence, saying a movie with him would be her one dream?

Tim Burton won her over with a cartoony, childlike quality set against something darker underneath. Martinez builds the same contrast between light and dark into her own work.

Christina Aguilera, a singer Melanie Martinez grew up hearing, did what during Martinez's blind audition on The Voice?

Christina Aguilera never turned around, although the other three coaches all hit their buttons for the 17-year-old. Later that season Aguilera became the first coach to lose every artist on her team.

Reviewers at Billboard and The New York Times likened Melanie Martinez's dark pop to Lorde and which other singer?

Lana Del Rey was the comparison critics kept reaching for. The Times heard a candy-coated variation on the two singers' dirges, while Billboard felt Martinez lacked their subtlety.

What did Melanie Martinez begin writing in kindergarten that later became the basis of her first songs?

Poetry came first for Martinez, who was shy and had few friends. As a teenager she set her poems to music, and the results were her earliest songs.

Which Taylor Swift video beat Melanie Martinez's nominee to Best Visual Effects at the 2023 MTV Video Music Awards?

Anti-Hero took the award, beating the video for a song Martinez had written and produced entirely on her own. It was one of only two tracks she had made that way.

Which rhythm video game series added a 2015 Melanie Martinez song to its 2025 edition with a cartoon routine?

Just Dance gave the song a short 2D-animated routine made by French studios. The deluxe-edition track had become a sleeper hit years after its release.

Melanie Martinez's Portals track Spider Web uses images of being caught in a web to describe an addiction to what?

Social media is the trap in the song, which is built on a xylophone melody and runs without a break into the next track, Leeches.

Which US-born festival's three South American editions saw Melanie Martinez debut songs from Portals in 2023?

Lollapalooza gave fans in South America the first live hearing of the album, weeks before its release. A year later Martinez headlined the festival's home edition in Chicago.

What did Melanie Martinez adopt for her Portals era, replacing the pastel image of her earlier albums?

Prosthetic makeup and elaborate costumes made her into the album's otherworldly alter ego. The rebrand swapped her light pastels for darker colours and themes of nature.

A co-writer on Cry Baby's lead single told Melanie Martinez her voice recalled which golden-age Hollywood star?

Judy Garland was the comparison made in the session, which suited a singer who says she loves music from the 50s and 60s. The same co-writer also worked with her on the bonus track Cake.

Melanie Martinez's 2020 track Brain & Heart borrows from If You Had My Love, the debut single of which star?

Jennifer Lopez launched her music career with that 1999 song. Because Martinez's track borrows from it, Lopez and the song's other writers share the writing credit on Brain & Heart.

Reviewers at the Evening Standard and Exclaim! compared Melanie Martinez's Portals-era image to which art-pop singer?

Björk can pull off this kind of thing because she is Björk, Exclaim! argued, and its reviewer was far less kind about how the new guise sat on Martinez.

In Melanie Martinez's film K-12, a student is removed from class for refusing to stand for what?

The Pledge of Allegiance protest gets the student hauled out in an early scene. Martinez said she wrote the film to portray school as a condensed version of life.

Which supernatural power do Cry Baby and her best friend use to avert a crash in Melanie Martinez's film K-12?

Levitation lets the pair lift their runaway ride into the air and set it down outside the school. They later learn from a spirit guide that they are immortal beings.

At the end of Melanie Martinez's film K-12, what encloses the school before it floats away and explodes?

A spit bubble does the job, blown by Cry Baby and Ben, the boy who has confessed both his feelings and his own powers. The two leap clear as the building drifts off.

On Melanie Martinez's K-12 Tour, venues were gradually perfumed with the scent of which fruit during one song?

Strawberries scented the air while she sang Strawberry Shortcake ten feet up, perched atop a giant skirt.

Which Melanie Martinez song, first heard over the end credits of her film K-12, became a single in June 2020?

Fire Drill also served as the closing number of the K-12 Tour, yet it was left off the deluxe EP that followed the album.

Which 2006 hit was Melanie Martinez's own song choice in her final week on The Voice?

Crazy, the Gnarls Barkley hit, was her own pick for the top-six show, sung alongside a Lenka song chosen by her coach. The audience vote sent her home on the next night's results show.

Which crowdfunding site paid for the video for Melanie Martinez's debut single, shot and styled by her friends?

Indiegogo backers funded the shoot through a page Martinez set up herself. She had no record deal yet; that came two months after the single.

Melanie Martinez says her debut single, about a dysfunctional family, doubles as a metaphor for how people view whom?

Celebrities and their seemingly perfect public lives were her second target. Like the family in the song, she said, they hide behind a perfect facade.

Which former American Idol judge co-wrote the Melanie Martinez songs Pity Party and Cake?

Kara DioGuardi judged the show's eighth and ninth seasons before going back to songwriting. Her other credits include songs for Carrie Underwood and Cobra Starship.

Which 2016 thriller starring Emma Roberts and Dave Franco features the Melanie Martinez song Soap?

Nerve, a film about an online dare game, used the track a year after its release. Martinez wrote it about being too scared to tell a new boyfriend how she felt.

Where did friends of Melanie Martinez shoot the first video for her 2015 single Soap?

A hotel bathtub served as the entire set, and the clip went out the same day as the single. A second video followed that November, paired with another album track.

Which love song from Cry Baby shared a double-feature video with Melanie Martinez's single Soap in November 2015?

Training Wheels follows straight on from Soap in the two-part video. One review singled it out as the album's song of exhilarating love amid tracks about heartache.

On which late-night talk show did Melanie Martinez perform Pity Party in 2016 and three K-12 songs in 2019?

Jimmy Kimmel Live booked her both times. The second visit came ten days after K-12 came out, with a set that included High School Sweethearts and Recess.

A 2020 remix of a viral Melanie Martinez song by the duo 100 gecs met what fate soon after release?

It was taken down for reasons that were never given. The remix's cover was a drawing of the hyperpop duo and Martinez holding three hearts.

Which British singer of the viral hit Messy was among the opening acts on Melanie Martinez's 2024 arena tour?

Lola Young shared the opening slots with Men I Trust, Beach Bunny, Sofia Isella and Elita. Messy later earned her a Grammy for Best Pop Solo Performance.

In which capital did Melanie Martinez's 2024 arena tour end with a set at the Corona Capital festival?

Mexico City hosted the final show in November 2024, six months after opening night. In all the tour ran to fifty-three shows across North America and Europe.

How does Melanie Martinez herself first appear in one teaser for her 2023 album Portals?

Hatching from an egg fit the campaign's theme of rebirth. Other teasers showed growing embryos and eggs incubating in forests.

Portals gave Melanie Martinez her first number-one album in Australia and which other country?

New Zealand and Australia both sent the album to the top. It stalled one place short in the United States and the United Kingdom.

Which tiny European state gives its name to the fourth single from Melanie Martinez's 2026 album Hades?

The Vatican came out as a single in May 2026, two months after the album. Hades uses allegory to take aim at religious hypocrisy, among other targets.

Which Melanie Martinez single recalls the high-school job she worked to pay for her art and music?

The Bakery looks back on shifts she worked without much enthusiasm, saving the money for creative projects. Blake Slatkin produced the track.

In Melanie Martinez's film K-12, which spirit guide tells Cry Baby and her best friend that they are immortal?

Lilith is an angelic figure who rescues the pair from the school nurses and tells them to stay at K-12. She returns at the end through a portal-like door in the ground.

In Melanie Martinez's film K-12, which bully threatens Cry Baby for lending an eraser to a boy named Brandon?

Kelly is Brandon's jealous girlfriend, and she attacks Cry Baby at recess soon after. She is also the one student who stays behind when the school is evacuated.

In the teaser for Hades, Melanie Martinez's new pop-star character is said to have been extracted from what?

A secluded cult is the backstory given to the character, billed as a new pop star out of Hades Tech. The album's second track asks in its title whether this is a cult.

Which English city's Co-op Live arena drew more than 22,000 fans to a Melanie Martinez show in 2024?

Manchester gave her the biggest audience of her career up to that point. Her sold-out shows in the United Kingdom that year moved more than 50,000 tickets between them.

Which singer-songwriter, a Grammy winner for the single Criminal, made an album Melanie Martinez names as an influence?

Fiona Apple's fourth album sits beside two Ariana Grande records, Yours Truly and My Everything, on the short list of specific albums Martinez says shaped her sound.

Melanie Martinez's 2026 arena tour paired the album title Hades with which two-word subtitle?

The Sacrifice was announced in April 2026 as her sixth headlining tour and only her second staged entirely in arenas, with dates in the United States and Europe.

During which K-12 Tour number did Melanie Martinez iron clothes on stage in a Venetian-style drawing room?

Drama Club is the song that, in the film, follows Cry Baby being cast as a housewife and asking for a different role. The ironing board carried that part onto the stage.

Which R&B star advised Melanie Martinez's team during the Battle Rounds of The Voice in 2012?

Mary J. Blige was the guest adviser when Martinez won her battle, a duet of an Ellie Goulding song. The other teams' advisers included Rob Thomas and Billie Joe Armstrong.

Which American painter, dubbed the godfather of pop surrealism, does Melanie Martinez count among her favourite artists?

Mark Ryden shares her list of favourites with Aleksandra Waliszewska and Nicoletta Ceccoli. Martinez says the three have shaped the visuals of her music videos.

Which future star of the Gossip Girl reboot made her screen debut as Fleur in Melanie Martinez's film K-12?

Zión Moreno was cast as the classmate Cry Baby coaxes away from the school bully's clique. She went on to play Luna La in the HBO Max series, which premiered in 2021.

Which duo, writers of the chorus of B.o.B's Airplanes, co-wrote and produced Melanie Martinez's debut single?

Kinetics & One Love went on to write much of Cry Baby with her, and they returned to co-write and produce one track on K-12.

Which 1988 surrealist film by Jan Švankmajer did Melanie Martinez cite as a visual inspiration for her film K-12?

Alice mixes live action with stop-motion animation in a dark retelling of Lewis Carroll. Martinez named it alongside pop-surrealist painters as a reference for the look of K-12.

Which producer co-wrote Melanie Martinez's Pity Party and returned as executive producer of her album Portals?

CJ Baran stayed on for Hades too, co-writing and producing its first two singles. His other clients include Carly Rae Jepsen and Panic! at the Disco.

In which city did Melanie Martinez open her first all-arena tour in 2024, at the home of the NHL's Kraken?

Seattle hosted opening night on May 10, 2024. The tour had been announced the previous November, as her run of theatre concerts for Portals was winding down.

Which producer, a collaborator on a few Cry Baby tracks, went on to produce most of Melanie Martinez's album K-12?

Michael Keenan also shares the music credit on the K-12 film with Martinez. On her debut album he had produced Pacify Her.

Which songwriter, later a co-writer of Dua Lipa's Don't Start Now, co-wrote Melanie Martinez's 2015 single Soap?

Emily Warren had her first hit as a songwriter the following year, with The Chainsmokers' Don't Let Me Down. She later wrote with Martinez again for K-12.

Melanie Martinez partnered in 2013 with the charity Love146, hosting concerts to support its work against what?

Child trafficking is what Love146 campaigns against, and Martinez gave it proceeds from her performances. She took up the cause a year before signing a record deal.