Melanie Martinez set herself apart from most artists from early on, not just with her unique sonic profile but also with her lead in the art pop and alternative pop genres. After her show at the O2 she continues to show why she has mastered not just music but the art of performance.

Expectations were high with it being a highly anticipated concept tour following the release of her HADES album. Melanie Martinez did not disappoint. She blew the crowd away with her theatrical performance of HADES: THE SACRIFICE at the O2. It was evident that Melanie had put thought into every little detail in order to give the best performance possible, from set designs, costumes, dancers, transitions and stages. It was an unforgettable evening, whether you were a recent fan of Melanie or have been following her from The Voice, everyone came together, singing, dancing, crying, laughing.

Despite having broken her toe, she still put her all into the choreography, and her voice, already unique in its own right, fills the stadium. She sings with such passion and distinction that you can feel the emotion each sentence carries. Melanie doesn't just sing at her fans but to and with her fans.

Melanie is known for her passion for using her albums as a way to build worlds, using fictional characters as vessels to process observed life experiences. The opening song, Garbage, has Melanie alone on her bed, it is delivered like that of an oral poet, a message that, whilst the world might be falling apart in societal collapse, there is still a profound beauty to hold each other close for. As she makes her way around the stage, it’s as if she addresses each person in the stadium. At times its delivery and response, giving the crowd time to shout back the response that’s incorporated into the song. 

As we move through the HADES catalogue, each song provides a unique performance towards the greater story, each transition carrying a short message from Melanie that sets the scene for what's coming. Is this a cult?, Possession and White Boy With A Gun turn to the various forms of male entitlement and female objectification, the choreography built so that at times she's manipulated like a puppet by her own dancers, controlled rather than in control. Disney Princess takes that same idea and widens it out to the industry itself. The screens behind her show a castle, she sits at the table while her dancers use their hands to shape a crown around her head, reacting to her every word as though she's narrating the fairytale to them, before she dances with them through the chorus without missing a beat, her voice still carrying through the room.
After Disney Princess, she moves over to the B stage to continue the stories. It's the smaller of the two stages, and Melanie stays the centre of it throughout, her dancers drawing their movements towards or away from her but always keeping her as the focus. The most poignant moment is Avoidant, just her and a fan brought up onto the small stage, facing each other. It's probably one of her most emotionally exposed songs, and to sit with someone, hold their hand and cry with them through it is raw in a way little else in the show manages. Watching her hug them afterwards, then lean in for a private word no one else could hear, felt like witnessing something that wasn't meant to be public, even with thousands of people watching it happen. Monolith carries that same rawness straight through, both songs speaking to the exhaustion of being worn down by how someone else sees you, whether that's a crowd or a person you loved. The lights brighten from the ceiling as she's lifted up and down, and there's something in that motion, raised only to be lowered again, that matches the song completely. Of everything that night, these two felt the most sincere, and it was impossible not to relate to them. Weight Watchers closes the block, and it's the most striking of the five. She strips down her costume, a moment of complete vulnerability, before being dressed in an exaggerated gown and paraded around by dancers holding the corset strings. As the song progresses, the body of the dress is opened to reveal her organs, and as she sings of surgery, her dancers remove them one by one, the stomach, the digestive tract. As a woman, that's a pressure most of us have felt at some point, and hearing her lay the insanity of those expectations so bare made something click, that they're stupid, and that your body was never something to be picked apart rather than loved.

Ten songs deep into the night, there's still no sign of her slowing down, her voice just as loud, her performance just as full as it was at the very start. The songs that follow remind you that while some would rather leave the uglier truths alone, Melanie doesn't. The Plague, Batshit Intelligence, Uncanny Valley and Hell's Front Porch move through disease, a dying planet, beauty turned artificial and a climate collapsing while those in charge stay in charge, injustices talked about in hushed whispers rather than dealt with. Gutter is the most emotionally driven moment of the run, a raw kind of anger that becomes your own, about a society that watches people go without and does nothing, that stands by rather than helps. You can feel the anger in the room, hers and everyone else's, the whole stadium electrified by it. The Vatican closes it out dressed differently to the rest of the night, Melanie in something closer to a nun's habit, her HADES symbol placed over the front of it, letting the crowd scream the lyrics back at her the same way Garbage did at the very start, a bold, perhaps necessary act of protest against the abuse that hides behind religious power.

Chatrooms follows, a quieter turn towards isolation, hiding behind a screen, the bullying and harassment that hides there too. Then the final song returns to the B stage, just her and one other dancer, weaving in and out of each other, holding onto the sense of being just two people against everything else. Last Two People On Earth is probably the simplest song of the night, anchored entirely on that one line, find someone you can be yourself with, someone worth holding onto even if the world outside is ending. It's the same message the show opened with, though it's taken the whole night to properly earn it. As the song ends, confetti falls, she bows, and delivers one final goodbye to the crowd.

Throughout the night, you could see her taking it all in, a smile rarely leaving her face, whether she was dancing, interacting with the crowd or sharing a small moment with one of her dancers. None of it read as a chore, all of it read as a pleasure, and even with a broken toe, she still chose to give every performance everything she had. It's always a joy watching someone who genuinely loves what they do, and after a night spent building a world this complete, it's hard not to already look forward to where HADES to Elysium takes it next.