Love + Fear (Marina)

EN “Love + Fear” is the fourth studio album by Welsh singer Marina Diamandis and the first as only Marina, released in full on 26 April 2019 by Atlantic Records. The idea of dividing the album into two parts is related to a theory by psychologist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, who argues that humans are only able to feel emotions derived from these two great emotions/feelings: love and fear. The psychologist herself states that "There are only two emotions: love and fear. All positive emotions come from love and all negative emotions from fear. From love flows happiness, contentment, peace, and joy. From fear comes anger, hatred, anxiety, and guilt. It's true that there are only two primary emotions, love, and fear. But it's more accurate to say that there is only love or fear, for we cannot feel these two emotions together, at exactly the same time. They are opposites. If we're in fear, we're not in a place of love. When we're in a place of love, we cannot be in a place of fear."

For the release of the album 5 singles were selected from a total of 16 tracks, the first single being the track "Handmade Heaven". The track that opens the album is sort of a hymn to life, nature, and its little details, with superb production, courtesy of Lorde's usual producer, Joel Little, and its verses seem to be from a Disney movie (“Bluebirds forever color the sky"), giving us a glimpse of what was to come on this new album. After the opening single, comes the second single, “Superstar”, a synthesizer-driven pop ballad that could well be part of one of the soundtracks of the James Bond films. The track is purely dedicated to love, reflecting this in its lyrics “Come and save my day/you're my superstar”. The third single is a more relaxed track, “Orange Trees”, with a carefree nature, as well as the video itself, shot by Sophie Muller in a private village in Puerto Vallarta, and its lyrics describe a summer novel spent in the beauty of nature. The track turns out to be one of the most animated of the first part of the album, being one of the most "powerful" and “colorful” moments on the album. In "To Be Human", the fourth single, Marina extends the bridge of "Beautiful Day" from U2 to the duration of a complete song and fills the space with a bizarre reference to the embalmed corpse of Vladimir Lenin. Although Marina considers "To Be Human" the "most political song" of the album, she resists making definitive statements, leaving us a song about finding light in a world that is in constant conflict, and all this is complemented by a fantastic video, by Anna Patarakina. Finally, the last and fifth single, “Karma”, is the only track to be released from the section “Fear”. The artist was inspired by the movement “Me Too" and the cases of sexual abuse of Harvey Weinstein while writing the song, although initially she was not aware of the inspiration. It is a pop song with a tropical beat, which lyrically describes a woman facing a man, insisting that he will eventually receive his karma.

Her great focus when composing “Love + Fear" was to return to a place where music could be pleasant, productive and at the same time healing, that is, in other words, a safe place. As we listen to the album we enter in a sort of meditation exercise, with the artist's voice engaging us in a soft and soothing way, as she herself says “because your worst days, they are over/So enjoy your life”.

Despite “Love + Fear" not being the return to the luxurious pop of “Electra Heart", something that fans have been waiting for a few years, the album does not fail as a project with pop at its core. It is in fact an album of two halves; a part dedicated to love that never disappoints and that invites us to contemplate life through the small details; and then an intriguing fear arises, which suggests an incessant need to search for something that is not tangible. Even leaving behind the "Diamonds" of her band, her pop brilliance remains intact, and this album is proof of that.

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