The pandemic brought a lot of things with it, a deadly virus, national lockdowns, and a chance for reflection. Many people took the time and reflected on their current state, others reflected on nothing, others reflected on society, others, like Marina Diamandis, reflected on their own lives. In the time since the height of the pandemic, life has returned to normal. People are working and people are back in school. One thing that has arisen since the height of the pandemic is working yourself to the bone. Ask anyone if they are worried about anything, and they have anxieties about the economy, their family, their homes, and their futures. One thing that is often left off the list and is even banished from their minds are their emotions.

The pandemic sparked a national conversation about mental health, but the spark did not take. Society has pushed emotions to the backburner, again, and we have seen the harms it has caused.

Marina Lambrini is a Welsh singer, who goes by the stage name of MARINA. In 2021, she released her fifth studio album "Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land", an album with a lot to say. One of the songs on the album is called "Highly Emotional People". This song is packed with thoughts on humans and their emotions. Accompanying the thoughts, come a beautiful instrumental, and a crescendo that moves you.

The song starts out speaking of things larger than our lives, supernovas, the universe, and God, but MARINA zooms into the universe, into our solar system, and onto Earth. The entire time, a light piano is playing.

Once we arrive to the Corus, a light string instrument is added to the piano. An ethereal, almost melancholy feeling is achieved. Here, we find the lyric, "we're just highly emotional people". It is not breaking news to declare humans have emotions, and it is not breaking news to express emotions; so why is this obvious truth the center piece to this song? At the end of the chorus MARINA sings "I never see you cry". Her voice rises, as if holding back her tears. A slight quiver in her voice. This lyric makes more sense the more the song goes on.

On the second verse, she focuses more on the blight a person feels, life is hard, emotional weight, but her lyric "feelings come up, and you push 'em back down" is the most important part. This specific line talks about a common way of coping with your feelings. By pushing down your emotions, you can ignore them and carry on with what you are doing. The reason this is not a good coping mechanism is that it leaves, the often, negative emotions, unresolved, and lets them fester. This lyric recontextualizes the obvious truth of the chorus. It is a not a statement of fact, but a reminder; a reminder of what we are. We are highly emotional people.

Speaking of the chorus, the second chorus comes back, but this time, it is different. Her voice is more emotional, she is clearly holding back a sob; not letting it escape her throat.

The next verse is a special message. It goes,

"People say men don't cry

It is so much easier to just lie

"Til somebody takes their life".

This section of the verse is so short yet speaks to so much. It speaks to so much history, so much societal standards, and to so much suffering. A residual of the strong patriarchal society seen in the 1950s America tends to be the root of a lot of it. A man would make all the money. So, if a man were too emotional or expressed too much emotion, he could not make money, and his family would starve. Seventy years later, even though society has changed in every other facet, this belief of men has persisted, and its harm is more obvious than ever. In 2021, a CDC study found that the suicide rate jumped by four percent, but specifically men's suicide rate grew over four times the rate of women's suicide rate. This verse reads like a pleading letter, while MARINA's voice conveys the emotion and weight the words hold.

MARINA goes on to reinforce this with the last line of the verse "emotions are a part of our design". Not only does this line refer to the beginning with the invocation of our designer, not only does it reinforce the last three lines by continuing to emphasize the naturality of emotions, but it continues to reinforce the entire song's message.

Then, the music builds and builds, the musical version of a wave growing and growing, until the wave dwarves a tsunami.

Then the wave crashes, a subtle hum, and a strong chord is played. Chills run up the spine, even after a million relistens. MARINA repeats the chorus one last time. Her vocal talent shine with the strong music, a haunting, almost ethereal send off to this song.

Highly Emotional People by MARINA is a song that has a lot to say but has even more to remind its listeners of. We all have emotions, all these emotions are natural, and bottling these emotions will cause harm.