I'll explain all of the songs' meanings since you seem kinda confused:
1. DEATH - seems self explanatory
2. VOID- talks about how society judges, shames and dehumanises us and these thoughts eat away at our brain, and we start judging ourselves, (the priest metaphor)
3. TUNNEL VISION- talks about toxic men who want her for her body and also how some fans sexualise and objectify her
4. FAERIE SOIREE- it's about the euphoric feelings of being on drugs apparently, i guess that's why they're injecting themselves with needles in the MV
5. LIGHT SHOWER- it's just a love song using the metaphor of a snail in the desert following an orb of light that leads it to a rainforest, the perfect environment for a snail to thrive
6. SPIDER WEB- once again, the music videos make it super clear, it's about social media addiction and how it's also used as a control tactic
7. LEECHES- about how toxic people take advantage of you, like leeches sucking you dry
8. BATTLE OF THE LARYNX- just a cool song about standing up against someone who thinks of you as inferior
9. THE CONTORTIONIST- trying to please SOMEONE who doesn't even appreciate you.
10. MOON CYCLE - seems self explanatory:)
11. NYMPHOLOGY - breaking societal labels and standing up for yourself, reclaiming your confidence
12. EVIL - It's about wishing karma on a toxic person seems self explanatory
13. WOMB - an expression of rebirth and the feeling of starting a new phase

DELUXE TRACKS-
14. POWDER- watching someone struggle with a drug addiction and trying to help them despite their denial
15. PLUTO- letting go of the past and moving on
16. MILK OF THE SIREN- standing up to the patriarchy

For me personally, portals is her finest work, I still can't choose between hades and portals lol, but definitely the concept was GENRE-DEFINING

Faerie Soirée is generally accepted as a song about being on drugs or shrooms but in the storyline Melanie describes it as the 4th stage of the afterlife where she surrounds herself with her ancestors and old family members and is supposed to feel like home. She made this album during her stay in Hawaii so this song could draw inspiration from Hawaiian culture and instruments.

you NEED to listen to the deluxe edition!!! there’s only 3 tracks but they’re all absolutely worth the listen 😊🩷

portals is heavily based on after life regression therapy, so a lot of these are connected to books she’s read that are very complex.  
while also being used as metaphors to relate to the human experience in life! she used to have  on her insta a highlight going over every song meaning!

Personally I think Portals is her best album but Hades comes close. I just love how different it is to her other work. I LOVE that so many of the songs have this rock ish sound. It’s right up my alley. And the transitions are perfect/seamless.

This was honestly one of those albums you needed genius for if you really wanted to understand the songs. Such a shame that you didn’t 😭 because you seemed kind of lost throughout the video after each song. Many of the songs are deep and you will not understand them in the first listen and have to really decipher and dig through the lyrics. Especially in certain ones like Void, fairie soiree, powder & milk of the siren.

Also the reason why some of the songs may not make sense with the character is because not all of them are literally about the character. The album is more of a body of work about death, transformation and the process of it, rebirth, healing, femininity and spiritual cycles

The only songs that are clear anchors to the actual rebirth story of the character are I would say death, void, tunnel vision (the first few) and womb

Also about womb.. that’s the beginning of the cycle as her character for the portals album. The nymph creature. Not circle. Circle is her new character apart of her new album Hades. (The album isn’t about circle but the movie she has planned is about that new character)

Hades actually isn’t even story based at all. None of the songs have anything to do with her new character. The mini book she released with the CD on her webstore and the Audio version are the only connections to the character ‘Circle’. the music/songs on the album has nothing to do with it.

I really loved the portals era. Battle of the larynx healed my depression, taught me how to avoid toxic people, and defend myself properly and know my worth.
Ill never stop supporting her.

PORTALS storyline:


Death: The physical Death of Cry Baby, and her spirit detaches from the vessel.

Void: Cry Baby has to escape an endless abyss of self criticism of her past lifetime, to find the light within so she could move on from that lifetime.

Tunnel Vision: Cry Baby goes through a tunnel of transformation to get onto the other side, while she's put to the test by the spiritual world and creatures in the tunnel.

Faerie Soiree: Cry Baby makes it onto the other side, and meets with faerie guides and has a party with them.

Light Shower: Cry Baby's spirit is cleansed by a radiating light that brings her spirit back to her original vibration, erasing Cry Baby.

Spider Web: Cry Baby is brought to the human school of the afterlife, with all of our past lives and unresolved issues all connected to this area. She views people with the issue of phone addiction.

Leeches: Cry Baby views one of her own reoccurring unresolved issues of fake toxic manipulative friends.

Battle Of The Larynx: Cry Baby is put into an unresolved issue of arguments, and she learns how to overcome it for next time.

The Contortionist: Cry Baby is out into an unresolved issue of bending down for others who won't accept you for who you are, and she learns how to overcome it for next time.

Moon Cycle: Cry Baby is put into an unresolved issue of men who crave period sex, and she learns how to overcome it for next time by viewing her self worth and the cycle of life and transformation throughout life.

Nymphology: Cry Baby and other Fae guides are put into an unresolved issue of men who try to take away their self worth and put feminine labels, and she learns how to overcome it for next time.

Evil: Cry Baby is put into an unresolved issue of narcissistic people who call her evil because she sees through their bullshit, and she learns how to overcome it for next time and fully view her worth.

Womb: Cry Baby is ready to move on, and she's born as someone new, getting rid of all of her memories as Cry Baby, marking the true death and ending of Cry Baby, forever.


The 3 songs on the deluxe match vibes and themes but are not part of the storyline.

Here’s a breakdown of the album so you can understand the story : ]

All of the songs have the relatable earthly meanings. But the true meaning of this album is based on experiences told by people who have undergone hypnosis for past life regression and were asked to remember the in between stage of death and life (people who have near death experiences often describe the same type of things).

So we start with the physical body dying and the soul detaching from it (DEATH). It then enters a void where it is alone and reflects on the life it just departed (VOID). After this, it enters a tunnel where it begins to hear what’s usually referred to as “hymns of the familiar” (TUNNEL VISION). When it reaches the end of the tunnel, it is greeted and welcomed by its soul family (other souls that often reincarnate together and interact with each other on Earth) referred to as “the homecoming” (FAERIE SOIRÉE). The soul then gets bathed in a shower of gem-coloured light that cleanses it of all its earthly traumas and reverts it to pure love (LIGHT SHOWER). In this otherworld, the souls are all perfectly connected and interconnected, to the point that they don’t communicate with words (SPIDER WEB). The souls also attend a sort of “school” where they review their past lives to see areas they still need to evolve and work on, and they review different earthly conflicts that they can pick and choose from to experience during their next incarnation to help them evolve in areas they want to work on (LEECHES - EVIL). Once they have decided on the conflicts in their next life time, and discussed with other souls what parts they will play together and how they will interact in the lifetime, they are sent to the womb of the mother they chose where they are fused with the fetus and a “veil” is put on the soul so that it forgets planning the lifetime and forgets its past lives, as the knowledge of these things would make existence on earth much more difficult (WOMB).

Portals was definitely my fav from the trilogy but with hades out now It is my second fav all over

BOO PORTALS WAS THE BEST, STILL MOST CREATIVE ALBUM SHE DID
EDIT: WE SHOULD NORMALIZE LOOKING UP MEANING FOR MELANIE SONGS IF WE DONT GET IT<3

Okay it’s because you don’t get the actually story of the album, that pink thing IS crybaby, after school was her in the “vortex” of the portal to get through to the afterlife, the new character is circle whom is completely different and is not reordered to crybaby in anyway, in this she’s going through the struggles of the new alien world, this is a world where bugs are giant, and nature took over but technology is still present and humans are still greedy. This is her journey through her earthling life and we actually don’t know what happens to her after this so…

42:14 portals personally is my favorite project of hers lol, it was such a refreshing change from how similar k-12 and cry baby sounded. Also the deluxe tracks are pretty good imo! I get that maybe it’s not for everyone, I feel like you trying so hard to understand the story maybe made you not enjoy the songs themselves as much

I think you're a little bit too focused on how this relates to cry baby, in this album, crybaby is dead. Shes died and being reborn into something new entirely, kind of like at some point our child selves no longer exist, we become adults. This album has themes of love, of abusive relationships, toxic friendships, feeling down about yourself and standing up for yourself. It's also about the cycles of life and death the cycle of not existing before you're born and going back to non existence when you die. Melanie believes in reincarnation and with those beliefs, life and things you go through is seen as a "test" that you will go through in all your lives essentially until you learn the lesson it was trying to teach you. Its essentially about the cycle of life and death, you can't live without dying and you can't die without first being alive. Rather then going "what about crybaby" you need to focus on what the actual songs are telling you, what the lyrics make you feel, the imagery and meaning it paints for you.

You should react to the music videos and the last 3 Deluxe songs 🙏🏻

I always say this: don’t get trapped behind the characters!!! It will make it so you can’t process the lyrics properly as stand alone songs. Void for example has nothing to do with the creature escaping literal void, it’s a voice in her mind that she created by internalizing the toxicity of the outside world. She’s judging herself, she’s holding a loaded pew pew because she’s carrying the weight of her mind so much that the void is eating her. She says herself that she needs to take her insecurities and turn them into beauty, in the music video she literally shoots the bad thoughts out of her head to escape before she’s ever able to escape

very surprised on your interpretation of light shower! its my fave song because it seems like they finally found the thing that theyve been looking for their entire life and want to keep it. idk why it would give toxic relationship haha

This album is the afterlife of Cry-Baby, Melanie's past alter ego, as a resurrected form or transcended into something somewhat faerie! And she plays around in the songs precisely because mythologically, fae beings go beyond just being cute or majestic they are unpredictable, mischievous, and chaotic while simultaneously are immortal, ancient, and wise. This idea is 100% through what seems grotesque, like the broken bones, the laughter and weird sneezing noises, and the mocking tone used to discuss such a heavy topic as being trapped in an abusive relationship where you extinguish yourself for someone else in The Contortionist. But she does this throughout the entire album in an incredible way, with a gorgeous voice, spot-on instrumentals and some goofy stuffs. Only a pink creature with 4 eyes, moth ears, and gills could masterfully sing about being trapped in a spider web as a metaphor for how people are getting so addicted to social media that they are losing control of their own lives

PORTALS for me is definitely better than HADES, Death as an intro it's the most beautiful albums intros ever

PLEASE REACT TO HER FILM CALLED K-12