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Melanie Martinez gives her young fans a pop-music education

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Melanie Martinez, performing Friday at the Joint.
Photo: Patrick Gray/Erik Kabik Group

Three and a half stars

Melanie Martinez October 21, the Joint.

It’s probably safe to say that a significant number of people in the audience for Melanie Martinez at the Joint on Friday night were having their first-ever concert experience. Martinez’s pop music is often dark and challenging, but it’s also catchy and clever, and Martinez (who’s just 21 herself) has embraced a creepy-cute aesthetic that both fetishizes and subverts traditional images of girly girls. All of which is to say that there were a lot of teen and tween girls in the audience, singing along to every word, chanting “Melanie!” before Martinez took the stage and screaming so loudly at the beginning of each song that you’d think Martinez had at least 15 No. 1 singles.

She doesn’t, but that incredibly enthusiastic crowd is a sign that she might, one day. Already Martinez is thinking big with her stage design, expanding the concept of her Cry Baby album to a full-on, slightly nightmarish version of a child’s bedroom, complete with a giant crib, a teddy bear with glowing eyes, block letters spelling out the name of the album, two massive birthday cakes and the two band members (one on drums, one on guitar and keyboards) dressed like bunnies. Martinez herself wore a dress that resembled a young girl’s nightgown and awkwardly but exuberantly danced around the carpeted stage in socks, with a pink bow in her two-toned hair.

Martinez played the entire Cry Baby album essentially in order (with two bonus tracks added in), and although she doesn’t yet have the resources to stage a full-on pop opera, she did use the stage elements to explore the album’s themes of dealing with harsh adult realities from a young person’s perspective. As the youngest members of the crowd sang along, it was hard not to wonder whether they even understood everything they were singing: Some of the biggest response of the night was for “Tag, You’re It,” a stark story of sexual assault with a chorus that begins “Running through the parking lot/He chased me, and he wouldn’t stop.”

That song was punctuated by a man in a wolf mask chasing Martinez around the stage and eventually locking her in a wardrobe, before she returned to vanquish him on the next number, “Milk and Cookies,” singing about poisoning and killing her attacker. That was as dark as the vibe got, though, and Martinez’s minimal stage banter was all of the “I love you guys!” variety. Her voice sounded strong, but she’s still finding her footing as a live performer, figuring out the balance between the music and the conceptual set pieces. At the end of the show, she promised to return next year with a new album, giving both Martinez and her fans some room for growth.

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