Melanie Martinez

With her fresh, innovative takes on alternative pop, Melanie Martinez went from TV competition show sensation to a certified hitmaker and creative force to be reckoned with. Following her formidable 2012 showing as a contestant on The Voice, the New York-born Latin American singer prepared her 2015 debut Cry Baby. Exemplified by its irresistible charting singles such as “Dollhouse” and “Pity Party,” the character-driven outing dealt with relatable themes in colorful ways. On her subsequent albums K-12 and PORTALS, she broadened the subject matter and genre styles of her first full-length effort into a veritable trilogy, all the while building an immersive musical universe anchored by her shrewd songwriting skills. Her successes compounded over the course of these projects, culminating in a sizable 2024 global arena-headlining tour that presented the three records to an international audience in an inventively spectacular fashion. For her fourth album, 2026’s HADES, Martinez pivots away from the Cry Baby era to push her conceptual artistry to new places, exploring utopian and dystopian ideas via tracks like the metaphorically rich “POSSESSION.”