- Music
- 20 Sep 24
Melanie Martinez performed in Dublin on Wednesday as the first date of the European leg of their Trilogy tour
On Wednesday evening, Melanie Martinez took the stage at 3Arena to perform her Trilogy Tour set, which included costume and set changes, fire magic, and a gaggle of expressively outfitted dancers.
The Trilogy Tour includes numbers from all three of Martinez's albums and eras including Crybaby, K-12 and Portals.
Before the set began, the interactive vibe was apparent. The crowd passed around colourful balloons, while personnel rolled out green-mossy-looking mats onstage, capturing the fairy-core aesthetic of their latest album.
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Beginning with her Crybaby album and its self-titled track, the rounded backing screen onstage revealed a nursery crib and dancers donning bunny heads.
Melanie's Crybaby split dye wig and tooth-gap, made her look like a living doll.
'Dollhouse' paired perfectly with the opening tune, with the nursery-themed instrumentals. I appreciated that the visuals and vocals were authentic to the vibe captured in the video for the track released in 2014.
Melanie's vocals were satisfyingly raspy and impressive, with a full band propped on mini-stages that looked like green hedges.
They often engaged audience members by jumping emphatically and turning her mic away from the stage during the most popular lyrics of her songs, which the audience screamed back in unison.
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At times, the adult-themed lyric content did seemingly clash with the younger audience, Like the TikTok-viral pop tune 'Teacher's Pet', which discusses a relationship between a teacher and student.
The stagecraft was continually impressive. During 'Show and Tell' Melanie danced and sang alone onstage, suspended from a virtual background that made her look like a real-life, marionette doll.
Between songs and sets, the dancers performed transitional skits that kept the attention of the audience, short and sweet, they demonstrated the skillfulness of the dancers.
The final set included songs from Melanie's latest album, Portals. The stage lighting shifted to green and pink hues, and the virtual background conveyed a fairy cottage-core wonderland.
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Martinez performed her songs 'Nymphology' and 'Void' with her Portals mask, transforming the singer's dollish appearance into a biblically accurate fairy.
Their final set included displays of firecrackers with billowing fire beams that seemed to avoid dancers narrowly, and before dull pink confetti raining from the ceiling.
Throughout the show, the dancers embodied the edgy and fun emotions in their movements without overshadowing Melanie's performance, that was grounded in her dedication to her sound and aesthetic.
The concert was both whimsical and entertaining. It is clear that though Martinez has aesthetically divulged from her first two albums; she has a deep appreciation for them, which she demonstrated on her Dublin stop of The Trilogy Tour.