Baldwin's Melanie Martinez to headline Radio City show
On the heels of her third studio album, "Portals," having dropped on Friday, Baldwin-raised recording artist and filmmaker Melanie Martinez announced a 29-date North American tour with a stop June 28 at Radio City Music Hall.
As in her handful of South American concerts last month, she will perform her elaborately theatrical stage show in full costume, prosthetics and makeup as the otherworldly resurrected creature reborn from the deceased Cry Baby, her alter ego on her first two albums.
General-public tickets go on sale 10 a.m. Friday at LiveNation.com. The tour commences May 30 in Denver and runs through July 15 in Montreal.
Martinez on Friday released "Portals" and its new single "Void," which racked up 3.3 million YouTube audio-only hits over the weekend. She had previously released the album cut "Death" on YouTube, with the audio-only version and the subsequent music video together reaching more than 15 million views. The 13-track art-rock album chronicles the death and surreal rebirth of Cry Baby from Martinez's albums "Cry Baby" (2015) — which continues to place on the Billboard 200 album chart after 164 weeks — and "K-12" (2019).
"I was inspired to create a concept album revolving around one of the most taboo subjects known to man. DEATH," the multiplatinum music star, 27, said in a statement.
"The mission of this record," she continued, "is to offer a perspective of true togetherness and immortality. The album starts at death and ends at womb but loops into itself meant to be played as a forever loop. The same way that our lives are on loop. Dying as an old person to be born all over again anew. Encountering the same familiar faces and patterns for our highest growth." Her alter ego "may have died, but she’s evolved into her newest form.”
Martinez appears at a Manhattan meet-and-greet Tuesday at 4 p.m. at the Rockefeller Center music store Rough Trade NYC. Tickets are $20, including a "Portals" CD, and $31, including the record on vinyl, at Dice.fm.