Ellie Goulding may have beaten her to the early accolades of 2010 but with The Family Jewels, Marina has produced a debut album so striking and honest it makes Lights look like second rate sixth form musings in comparison.
The Family Jewels isn’t the classic debut album that her early singles suggested was on the way, but there’s enough promise here to carry her through the hype.
A quirky, theatrical record that's full of pomp and self-importance, The Family Jewels is never less than exciting, but it does try a little too hate to be zany.
The Family Jewels seems to be symptomatic of a broader trend at the moment to demand our female artists be both credible and commercial at the expense of achieving anything great in either camp.
In my opinion Marina's best album, The Family Jewels is the embodiment of everything the artist represents like her eccentricity, unusual and fun productions and unique timbre. Marina identifies the lyrical themes on the album as "the seduction of commercialism, modern social values, family and female sexuality", bringing completely provocative and sincere subjects to the table.
I think The Family Jewels it's a really diverse album stylistically speaking because Marina's such a ... read more
shut up.
But yeah seriously, I've kind of fallen back in love with this. If you put the slight fake wokeness and occasionally cringy lyrics aside, this is a fun pop album and who ever said an album needs to be more than that to be great?
MARINA’s debut “The Family Jewels” is so genuine and creative, she came with her own sonority and style singing about her insecurities, criticizing the world issues, the capitalism tendencies with ironic verses like “TV told me how to feel, now real life has no appeal”, and created a full persona. Love this album so much and i think her next album “Ancient Dreams in a modern Land” will follow this lineup, “Froot”’s sonority, in a much ... read more
i don’t have any major likes or dislikes around this album. mowgli’s road, the outsider and rootless are definitely the best in the album but they in themselves are only okay.
One of, if not my favourite album of all time, from my favourite artist of all time, with only one truly forgettable song in my opinion (Guilty) while it's not her most accomplished record musically, I kinda don't really care about that all that much tbh. Most if not all the songs on there are good to great, and for the special place this album holds in my life, this will forever be the GOAT
1 | Are You Satisfied? 3:18 | 89 |
2 | Shampain 3:09 | 86 |
3 | I Am Not a Robot 3:32 | 87 |
4 | Girls 3:26 | 81 |
5 | Mowgli's Road 3:10 | 85 |
6 | Obsessions 3:28 | 87 |
7 | Hollywood 3:24 | 86 |
8 | The Outsider 3:14 | 82 |
9 | Hermit the Frog 3:33 | 85 |
10 | Oh No! 3:00 | 91 |
11 | Rootless 3:28 | 77 |
12 | Numb 4:14 | 85 |
13 | Guilty 3:39 | 78 |
#33 | / | NME |
#48 | / | The Line of Best Fit |