Last week Mowgli' s Rodby Marina The Diamonds appeared on Kanye West's blog. Not a bad recommendation for a yet-to- be-released single. Marina Diamandis tells JIM CARROLLhow a girl from the valleys took the well-travelled road to London to work at becoming a singer. Mum and dad weren't keen and she was rejected at auditions for an all-boy reggae band, but the world loves a trier and Diamandis is about to have her day.
A FEW days ago, Marina Diamandis gave into temptation one more time, fired up her computer and Googled herself. “I think it was three months since I’d done it,” she says – as if she’s confessing some mortal sin and daring you to disbelieve her.
The first couple of search results contained the usual fare. There was her own website, old interviews, rave reviews and . . . the Marina Diamond luxury apartments in Dubai. (“I think I’ll buy one of those some day.”)
Then, Diamandis found a comment that made her realise why she shouldn’t really waste too much time Googling herself. “I can’t remember what website it was, but the comment was ‘I don’t like her any more because she’s been on Perez Hilton’. That’s hilarious.”
Laughing at fickle internet trolls is probably well down Diamandis's to-do list, if it features at all. For a start, there's the matter of applying the final touches and completing the snag list on her debut album, The Family Jewels. There's a new single ( Mowgli's Road) to promote and a tour to rehearse for. There is, frankly, a lot going on in her world.
This is how it has been for Diamandis since Obsessions turned up as a single on the Neon Gold boutique label and alerted one and all to her talents. That ambitious, magnificent tune showed that we were in the presence of some very special potential. This was a pop song in the old-fashioned sense, a couple of minutes with oodles of melodic drama, eccentric hooks and theatrical flourishes. And, best of all, they had plenty more like it. A star was born.
But let’s leave the idea that we’re dealing with some overnight sensation here to one side. Like many other “overnight sensations” who have appeared before us in recent times, there have been a lot of ups and downs in the life of Marina The Diamonds since she hit the yellow brick road out of her native Wales.
Of course, this girl from a wee Welsh village knew from early on that she wanted to sing for a living. It didn’t matter that there were no professional singers in her family. She didn’t change her mind when her mum would turn up the volume on the radio in the kitchen to sing along to Dolly Parton, Enya, George Michael and “lots of cringey people like that”. She didn’t rethink her plans when her Greek father would play lots of traditional “dramatic, emotional, almost always tragic” Greek music around the house to remind him of home. She still wanted to sing.
“I knew from when I was about nine that I really wanted to sing and perform,” she says, “but I didn’t say it to anyone because I was really embarrassed at the thought for some reason. I did a lot of dancing and acting throughout my teens, but I don’t feel quite the same way about that as I did about the idea of songwriting and performing. It took me till I was 18 to be able to say to people that I wanted to sing.
“By then, I was living in London and was able to do things of my own free will. My mum and dad didn’t want me to become a singer because they thought it was a very risky move. They wanted me to go to university and be academic, but I had different plans. I really felt I had something to contribute to music.”
Her apprenticeship took time, and taking time was something an impatient Diamandis had to come to terms with. There were no shortcuts. “I was 18 when I arrived in London, and I had never really sung or written a song or performed in public before, so it took me about five years to get to the stage where I really was a singer. I had to just dive in and see what happened. Did I think it would take so long? Of course not. I really did think it was just going to happen.”
Marina enrolled in a stage school, started to broaden her skills and went to every audition that was listed in the back pages of The Stage. "I even auditioned for The Lion King, though I'd never done ballet before. It was just about doing anything I thought would bring me closer to becoming a singer."
Diamandis even came up with a crazy ruse to speed up the process. In fact, it was so harebrained that it mighty just have worked. “At the time, I didn’t know if I would be able to write songs or not so I had this masterplan. I was going to join a girl band, become a pop star, become very famous and successful and then I would have the control to do what I wanted to do and it would be all okay.
“I was so convinced that this was the thing to do that I even went to a audition for a reggae boyband at Virgin Records, but they wouldn’t let me in – obviously. I really thought it was my chance. I left a CD with the security guard and ended up having a meeting with someone there, but nothing happened.”
She busts out laughing at the thought of those naive hustles. “Strangely, that girlband masterplan never came to pass. My plan was always to have my own thing because I’m not very good at teamwork, so I don’t know what I was doing trying to join bands. I can’t imagine what would have happened if I had been accepted.
“I learned the hard way that you had to put in a lot of hard work to become a good singer and songwriter. You need to come up with great production and arrangements in the studio so you could come out as your own person, as opposed to being someone who was being told what to do.”
The first step in that regard came when she put pen to paper and wrote some songs. “I wrote a lot of poetry when I was back in Wales, but I only started properly writing songs after I dropped out of stage school and went to a vocal college. They forced me to play keyboards there to help the songwriting, and that’s where it began.”
The next step was hooking up with producer and co-writer Liam Howe (the guy from the Sneaker Pimps who produced Cathy Davey’s last album, among other releases). “I had these crappy demos that I did on my laptop, so we sent them around. No one replied; not one person got back to me. But Liam got in touch, we did a track together and the rest is history. It was a perfect fit.”
Add in some sparkle and glitter and she was ready for her close-up. “The visual aspect of what I do is hugely, hugely important. Like with the live show or making videos, which I love, I want to show that I have a lot of character by what I wear or how I perform. It’s another form of expression.”
By the time she had decided that the Warner label 679 was the one for her – and she had talks with 14 labels before plumping for the one that brought the world The Streets – there was already a huge level of expectation around Marina The Diamonds.
Diamandis sighs when this is mentioned because it’s all completely beyond her control.
“I don’t feel myself as if anything is going on or getting pushed. I mean, I haven’t finished the album yet. I’m so far away from the rest of next big things I’m mentioned in connection with. I do my thing, I write songs, I perform and I couldn’t care what other artists are doing.
“I’m just at the beginning and, while I’m really grateful for all the attention I’ve got so far, I’ve still a hell of a long way to go. So many artists and bands are leapt on at an early stage and tagged the next superstar that it comes as no surprise when they don’t live up to expectations. There’s probably about 10 true superstars in the world, and it’s ridiculous to give an act a title when they’ve done nothing yet.”
Despite her ire, Diamandis herself is hugely ambitious when it comes to her own music. She firmly believes she can elbow her way into that 10 true superstars line-up. “I think the likes of Shakira and Gaga could be my peers. Personally, anything I do, I want to be the very best at it. Otherwise it’s not worth doing.
“People who are at that level in pop music obviously sell loads and make shitloads of money, but the money and sales is not what motivates me. I want to get to that level by doing my own thing on my own terms. I want to do so by creating something which is honest and different – and I don’t think there is a lot of that out there these days.”
The single Mowgli's Roadis released on November 13th with the debut album, The Family Jewels, following in early 2010. Marina The Diamonds play Dublin's Academy on November 11th and Carlow's Dinn Ri on November 12th
