Melanie Martinez quotes:

I love Nicoletta Ceccoli , and I love Tim Burton movies. So those are like my biggest inspirations I think.

"Dollhouse" was definitely inspired by the whole Edward Scissorhands vibe where all of the houses are perfect, but inside each home there are very messed up families.

Cry Baby is a character so I think that the next album is going to be about a specific thing in her life or another place in her world. It's going to be a bit deeper into a bigger picture.

Cry Baby is just a character in this world that I'm trying to create, and the music videos are really important to me, and I've fought to obviously get all of them approved.

Cry Baby wasn't necessarily a baby theme but I understand what they're saying. So like, Cry Baby is definitely a remaining character throughout all of my albums.

Eventually I realized that Cry Baby was a character that was based off of me, and that we had a lot of similarities.

I also made a lot of really great friends on that show [the Voice], so that's one of the most important things that I've taken out of that experience.

I definitely feel like if I put out a song that was like me being super vulnerable, people would look as me as weak. I don't know if that has to do with me being a girl, or if that really has to do with anything, but I'm sure.

I definitely love horror movies and all that for sure.

I go with what I like and I generally just cling to things that are pastel and remind me of being a little kid. It's just what it is right now, but I go through phases.

I have a few songs that I'm figuring out and writing. I'm still figuring out the whole concept and how it's gonna connect to Cry Baby, but I have some ideas, yes.

I just don't really get to watch a lot of movies, like recently at least I haven't been able to but I did watch The Exorcist for the first time ever, recently, and it didn't scare me like I thought it was gonna scare me.

"Dollhouse" was really insane. We shot it at this top house studio in Brookyln. It was really cool. I designed a mini dollhouse that we used. I made it all by hand and decorated each room, and we based the actual set off of that. The Dollhouse was just plain wood and I put roofing on it and everything. I got real carpet for it. It was crazy. It was definitely an interesting experience. It was the first music video I've ever made. It was definitely stressful but awesome. Everybody was really amazing on set; we just had a blast doing it.

[Doing music] is time consuming, will drain you, and stress you out at times. But in the end if you love doing it, and you're putting out music you're proud of, it will never feel like work. It'll just feel like love.

[My style in three words] youthful, sweet, and diverse.

A lot of people relate my success now with The Voice, and it has nothing to do with that. I've definitely worked my ass off for a year afterwards trying to get that off of my forehead. If anything, it's actually harder to get labels to look at you when you come off a show like that, and it's harder for people to look at you like a real artist.

A lot of people say if you can't love yourself, then you can't love others. It's always different, but I definitely have loved a lot in my life.

And still as an adult like I do as well, you know what I mean like I literally just cried in the first interview that I had today. Like, I'm just a very emotional human.

Basically it's the idea of celebrities being in the spotlight and just because you think that they should be perfect, that they're still human and they still have flaws just like everyone else. So that was the real meaning behind "Dollhouse", at least how it related to me because it's something I was annoyed with at the time.

Cry Baby is about Cry Baby and the next album [which I think I have a title for but I don't wanna say anything yet because I don't know and it's too early] is a place in the weird town that I'm trying to create and its Cry Baby's perspective throughout this album. You're not learning about her, you're learning about the place that she's in and her perspective. Down the line for sure I will think of other characters in this world.

Even if the song meant a lot to me, I would still probably perform it live.

Everyone got to choose what they wanted to wear on stage, and by the third time going into wardrobe the stylists already knew what I'd love and what I would never throw on my body in a million years. They were fantastic, and it was so lovely working with them.

I always mention toy sounds when I go into any session.

I definitely fall in love quickly, and I'm very in love with being in love. But it is hard for me to write about love.

I definitely have worked trying to create music that inspires girls to feel confident and strong, and feel like they can do anything.

I don't really think about what people think of my music, and how they listen to it or what my demographic is.

I have definitely noticed I am very passionate. So if I'm fighting with someone I'll be SO super loud and aggressive, and make sure that my point is heard.

I just think that pop music is very interesting in how it can reach so many people. I like that I can tell stories and I just wanted to be heard more, I guess. That's why it's pop, but in my mind I don't really view my music as pop, I don't really view it as anything. I just look at it as a picture, I like visuals.

I like pop music because it can really affect a large amount of people and if I tell stories and spread messages that I think are really important for people to be aware of, I would want it to be on the biggest platform and I feel like pop is that. I use it as a way to tell stories.

I love directing my music videos and writing video treatments, and I think it's all just because I love the visual aspect of it as well.

I never had a lot of friends growing up so having this insane amount of love and support really means a lot to me.

I obviously have a different connection to each song in a different way, and they all mean something different to me.

I see things that nobody else sees

I think because "Dollhouse" was the first story that I put out. It was the first thing that people were able to listen to and find the aesthetic of my music, so I figured we could use that as a title.

I think honestly when I was younger I use to love going to carnivals in Long Island. I use to love carnival season; I would drive to every town going to carnivals. That was definitely a favorite memory.

I think that every decision I make in my life is based off of an emotion - and it definitely hurts me in some situations, and helps in some situations, like obviously writing and stuff is my favourite thing to do because I get to use all of my emotions and express them in that way.

I think that the next album is specifically for sure from Cry Baby's perspective, but it's not necessarily about her family-life or her love-life, or anything like that, it's more about this place in this town. The place has different characters in there, so in every song there's gonna be different characters that appear.

I think the transition between singing covers on a reality show to being able to do my own thing was really exciting. I'm no longer singing covers every second, and people are actually getting to hear my own original music.

I was always hard on myself for taking things too personally.

I was genuinely happy when I wrote that song [Training Wheels] and very in love. That's a very rare emotion to evoke out of me.

I was inspired a little while before The Voice to dye my hair half black half blonde by Cruella De Vil of 101 Dalmatians. One day I was watching it and I told my mom I was going to dye my hair like Cruella's, and she thought I was joking. I came home from the salon, and she didn't talk to me for a few days!

If I don't see a music video to it while writing it, I just scrap it immediately. It's very visual.

If you say something that is a little unsafe to say but you feel strongly and passionate about it, a lot of people can attack you and call you a bad role model just because they don't agree with your views, but in reality we're all different and we're all unique in our own way and we all have different thoughts.

I'll always definitely strive to write songs that are going to help people feel confident in themselves.

I'm always going to hear people make that connection and I've just accepted it. It's alright. I'm just happy that I get to do my own thing now. I learned a lot from the show [the Voice] as far as being in the TV world and being in front of the camera, which is really great because I'm not as nervous in front of the camera as I was before.

I'm glad I got to introduce myself to America by doing a Britney [Spears] song, haha!

I'm gonna write from personal experience, from emotion, from whatever the hell I'm feeling that day.

I'm insane, I'm emotional, but I'd rather be that than a robot. So that's definitely something that I wanted to get out there. Especially with Cry Baby's story, because the album is about Cry Baby but I realized that me and her went through the same change.

I'm not used to writing about happy emotions, I'm just used to pulling from my sad or angry - happy emotions are very hard for me to portray in music.

I'm obsessed with the venue and the people so it's going to be really fun.The last couple of tours I didn't have anything like that because of the budget, so I'm super excited because this is really going to bring the album to life.

I'm pretty excited for people to listen to the story of each song. It's definitely like a giant book with different stories in it. They are all very child-like but also a balance between light and dark.

I'm probably the most proud of "Mrs. Potato Head," because I had that idea in my head for so long, and I tried writing that song one time and I just couldn't tell the story the way I wanted to, and I couldn't figure it out.

I'm very, very in touch with my emotions.

It's just interesting how people relate my success when I would like to think that I worked my ass off for a reason and that it's about the music and not because I was on a TV show.

It's just weird because like when I was writing Cry Baby I like...the only thing that I was thinking about, when writing it, was the concepts and the visuals, and the way that it sounded kind of happened naturally.

It's like visual is super important to me. So if I am writing a song, like, I have to have the title.

It's very hard to be an artist, on my first album, and I'm like asking for money for a music video for every song - it's so hard to do. You have to pick your battles for sure, but I definitely want - and I've always worked to make it all connect - for all of it to feel cohesive.

I've had a lot of people come up to me after shows and tell me that "Dollhouse" really helped them with whatever they were going through with their families. I thought that was really amazing, that it could mean one thing for me but another thing for someone else.

I've had so many insecurities, and am still getting over a lot.

Just because I'm an artist doesn't mean I should be treated differently.

Make sure this [music industry] is what you love to do, and you can't imagine doing anything else.

Mark Ryden is my favorite visual artist.

My favorite performance would definitely be "Toxic," which was my blind audition song. It was the start of it all and it was a song I had been covering before the show, so it was very dear to my heart.

On the show [the Voice] I obviously wasn't allowed [singing my own original music], because it's not that type of show. I think it's really cool that I get to do my own thing now.

Probably "Mrs. Potato Head" or "Training Wheels". "Mrs. Potato Head" because it was the hardest song to write and it took me a while to finish it and feel good about the lyrical content. But I've had that idea in my head for so long, especially the visuals - pulling apart a Mrs. Potato face and how that doubled as a meaning for plastic surgery. "Training Wheels" because it's the only love song on the album.

So like what I want to do is connect all of my albums and make it tell a bigger kind of story. So the first album is very focused on her family life and her love life.

The Cry Baby character is so, like, based off of myself that it just really is just from personal experience. And when I was younger I was called a cry baby and made fun of for being super emotional and taking things way to personal.

The whole entire album is about Cry Baby, you know, being super insecure and kind of like going through her emotions until she finally realizes that she's comfortable with how crazy and insane she is and I think that I've made the exact same kind of progression , and the growth...and I don't know, like I feel like I've definitely grown into who I am and, like, I think Cry Baby is just me.

There are a lot of people who go their whole lives without truly knowing what love is, or ever experiencing that.

When I first started writing the album, "Cry Baby" was a song that I really wanted to write because it represented all of these personal insecurities that I had for a long time.

When I was younger I used to be really into photography, and I still am, I just don't really get to do it besides taking my own artists photos and stuff like that.

I think, being emotional is this thing that people think you're not strong. They don't look at you as a strong person, and it's weird 'cuz honestly being emotional has nothing to do with your strength.

I was very vocal about how I wanted to be portrayed on the show, and how I wanted the stage setup to be.

The title is the first thing that I have. Then when I have that title, I have to make sure that the title...is like, so...I have to make sure I can tell a whole story from that one title and like make sure that it, from beginning to end it makes sense.