COVER STORY: OUR SHOOT AND INTERVIEW WITH MARINA & THE DIAMONDS

Photography  CHARLOTTE RUTHERFORD
Photography Assistant CHARLOTTE BURKE
Art Direction NATALIE ARNETT
Styling SOKI MAK
Make Up MARIA ASADI
Hair ANDREA MARTINELLI & BEN MOTH
Set Design KIM MCBEATH
Nails JEN MCCOLL & ELLIE HARRY

Our interview with the ultimate Pop Primadonna!

For our MEMORIES ISSUE we would love you to take us on a tour through your childhood and teenage years, tracing the experiences that shaped you as a person.
Oh, where should I start? I moved around a lot. I was born in Wales, and then moved to London when I was one year old, moved to Greece until I was four and then I came back to the UK and stayed there for a longer time. So my childhood was mainly spent in a small village in Wales in the countryside.

Do you have any memories of the time in Greece?
A little bit. My parents divorced when I was 4, that’s why I moved back, so I remember that a little bit. Not in a negative way, just more like missing my dad at that time and then we moved to this funny little village and I remember always trying to hang around with my sister and her older mates. And them not really wanting me to be there. Later, when I was 16 I moved back to Greece and those two years, from 16 to 18 years, were very important for me, I kind of changed quite a lot as a person. I was in an environment that was completely alien to me. It was the first time I went to a school where there were boys, mixed-education, and it was very different because I was living with my dad and I hadn’t really lived with him before, and with my grandma, who was 85 at that time. It was a very positive experience, but my dad was very strict so I wasn’t able to do a lot of things.

Do you remember any moments of teenage rebellion?
Yes, I do! Like two weeks after I arrived, I made all these new friends. In Greece you go out really late, so you leave at midnight and you come back at seven in the morning. And I was going to this club with my friends and my dad wasn’t home so I had to lie to my grandma to let me out and she did not approve at all but I left anyway and came back the next morning at 8 am and got a massive, massive bollocking, a big telling off.

Were you ever grounded?
No, it was more just extreme moodiness in the house, it’s almost the same as being grounded. These are very vivid memories for me.

Is there anything about your parents you see in yourself?
Well, I’m like my dad the most. We are both extremely stubborn, very single-minded and kind of determined and we both have the same sense of humor. Whereas my mum is very relaxed, very non-judgmental, quite a peaceful person. So I hope I’m somewhere in between the two.

What are your most vivid musical memories growing up?
I think my first musical memories were around seven or eight years old with Dolly Parton’s “Jolene” and Annie Lennox’ “Sweet Dreams”. That’s what my mum played. And then, when I started to get my musical taste around ten years old, I loved No Doubt, and Britney Spears and Madonna – that was when I was like 14. Very pop actually, very commercial. And then it kind of changed when I was 19 or 20, when I started to listen to much more alternative female voices like The Distillers, I was obsessed with Brody Dalle, Shirley Manson, P.J. Harvey, Fiona Apple. It would be quite a varied soundtrack…

Any particular songs you remember first connecting emotionally to?
I liked “Don’t speak” by No Doubt. I related it to a boy that I’d fancied at that time. I got so sad, so so sad. And it’s hilarious to think of it. Because now as a musician, if you see really young kids relate to music you wonder what is going on inside them, how they process their emotions.