What Most People Don't Know About Melanie Martinez

Posted by Abbie Anker on Saturday, March 9, 2024

After the success of her debut album in 2015, Melanie Martinez was poised for an impressive full-length follow up. This did not come about quickly. Though the star had written all the songs for her sophomore effort, "K-12," by the time "Cry Baby" had its first birthday, the tracks didn't see the light of day until 2019. Why? The star abandoned the traditional one to two-year album cycle to bring her meticulous vision to life. This time, it involved more than visuals to match each of the album's tracks. It involved an entire full-length film, which she wrote, directed, and starred in.

In an interview with Idolator, Martinez revealed that she first recorded the "K-12" album in its entirety before writing the film. She then spent months revising the script, only to graduate into an "intense" pre-production. "It was like, 'Go to the pre-production office at 9:00 AM, come back at 10:00 PM, work all night,'" she said. "I wouldn't even sleep. I was literally working all night on all the answers that I had to give people the next day."

All in all, Martinez revealed that pre-production was a three-month process. They ended up shooting the film in Budapest over the course of 31 days, and eventually, it premiered in 2019. Though it admittedly reads a bit like a Wes Anderson-inspired fever dream, it has a 90% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, so the effort wasn't wasted.

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