Discover the darkness of Melanie Martinez’s Disney Princess: we analyze the lyrics meaning, the Avril Lavigne sample, and the Hades Tech lore.
A new song has emerged from the now-infamous Hades, the new Melanie Martinez album set for release in March 2026: Disney Princess arrived on February 26, a track with a unique character that offers much more than its surface-level lyrics.
As we already knew, the Hades album centers on Circle, a new character created by Melanie Martinez. It’s a story of lost innocence and industry exploitation that we previously explored in our coverage of Possession. Yet, there is much more to Disney Princess: clear autobiographical references to the transformation caused by fame, a significant sample of an old Avril Lavigne track that recontextualizes the song, and the visceral sound of flesh being torn apart at the end of the track.
What is the meaning behind these elements? Let’s take a look together.
Melanie Martinez vs. Circle: How Autobiographical is Disney Princess?
There has been much debate over how much of Disney Princess is tied to the new character Circle and how much carries autobiographical connotations. The truth likely lies somewhere in the middle. As we explored in our analysis of Possession, Circle is a new persona introduced by Melanie Martinez for this era: a creation of the mysterious Hades Tech, presented as a “service for the new humanity.”
Let’s revisit the character’s introduction from the album announcement:
Presenting Circle, our newest pop star out of Hades Tech, extracted from a secluded cult, untouched by our AI-driven society.
Her naivete, our greatest asset, her instincts, raw and volatile. Using cutting edge technology, we’ve downloaded the world’s obscenities directly into her system engineering something so vile, seductive, and unforgivable.
She is guaranteed to provide public outrage and obsession. A necessary sacrifice, one that will finally justify the permanent banning of human artists once and for all.
While a secret purpose behind Hades Tech remains to be revealed, the parallel between Circle and Melanie is clear: both are, in different ways, products of the industry. Circle was built entirely from scratch; Melanie Martinez’s career was constructed step-by-step as an explicit intention of the music business.
Both are presented as something humanity can exploit. With Circle, this exploitation takes on abusive overtones, and that is the angle offered by the first single, Possession.
In Disney Princess, however, Melanie Martinez addresses another parallel: the coercion the industry has applied to both her and Circle. Because the song’s message is clear: fame never comes as a blessing, but it has a price to pay, right from the start. This is evident as early as the story told in the introduction of Disney Princess:
The prettiest girl in all the land
Was left alone without a hand
To hold or teach or mold or pray
She fell down the sewer and got led astray
Monsters, demons, and all the rest
Took her soul and innocence
They tweezed and pulled all that was left
‘Til she was made a Disney princess
The Loss of Innocence: The Meaning of the Lyrics
For Melanie Martinez, becoming a “Disney Princess” means transforming exactly into what the industry requires to make you marketable. This is why she compares the process to falling into a sewer where “monsters and demons” steal your soul. In the music world, becoming famous is simply the result of a long series of compromises between your true nature and what the industry says “works.”
Martinez’s ascent began at just 17 years old on The Voice. Since then, her rise has been unstoppable, but growing as an artist meant building an image that quickly distanced itself from her youthful innocence—a necessary move for visibility that the singer, deep down, may not have truly wanted.
Drunk drive ’til I am twenty bombs
In deep, I need to trauma dump
He says I fight for relevance
The words I’ve feared since I was young
Those who know the singer’s true nature understand she isn’t someone who naturally seeks fame or attention. This fits perfectly with Circle’s story: as a “product” created by a corporation, nothing she is was ever her choice. But while Circle has no escape, Melanie knows her image is the result of a consent she gave in exchange for success. She is the one who “signed the dotted line,” and now she must accept the consequences of a “deal with the devil” that may not have been clear at the start.
Please don’t go
You’re the only one
Who sees my soul
But f-ck these other c-nts
Can’t quit the show
I’ve signed the dotted line
And I’ve f-cked every devil
Innocence, therefore, is lost, and it can no longer be recovered. Her life is now characterized by the typical excess of stars, by wealth and the adoration of fans: all elements that the singer never explicitly aimed for. It is like realizing too late the price that what you pursued has demanded of you. A price that cannot be redeemed: all the money in the world is not enough to buy back the innocence of your past.
We can go there faster than they can
Faster than the average person
Los Angeles, turn on your TV
Come on, worship me, I’m perfect
Behind the scenes, liquor and cocaine
Suffering and pain, it’s worth it
My allowance bought me everything
Still can’t buy my innocence
The most painful verses arrive in the second half of the song. During her “age of innocence” at the start of her career, Melanie Martinez famously wore bows during her performances. You can see them right in her 2012 appearance on The Voice.
This accessory symbolized her childhood purity. In Disney Princess, she reveals the cost of trading that symbol for a more seductive, “tempting” image—the very temptation the industry uses to steer a character in a profitable direction.
I traded my bows
For strapless bras and snow
Can’t toss this gold
It’s my name that they know
Who’s all this for
If I’m so miserable?
I wanna kill all these devils
The Avril Lavigne Sample: The Dark Side of Rebellion
Fans immediately recognized the hidden interpolation within Disney Princess: the guitar riff that accompanies the song is pulled from an old Avril Lavigne hit, What The Hell. Listen to it again below.
The sample is introduced in a darker version and accompanies Disney Princess from start to finish. The inversion of Avril Lavigne’s original message is clear: What The Hell was a teen anthem about “letting go,” following one’s rebellious instincts, and telling everyone to go to hell—ignoring the social schemes and pressures that demand we “be good.” You only live once, and you’re only young once, right?
We can easily imagine that Melanie Martinez listened to Avril Lavigne as a teenager, seeing herself reflected in her messages. Fifteen years later, Martinez adopts that melody in a song that reminds everyone of the cost of that teenage rebellion: “letting go” to the temptations of success is a choice you can’t take back. Step by step, you lose the nature of who you once were, and suddenly you realize you’ve become something you no longer recognize. Melanie Martinez still maintains a strong awareness of her own nature and the changes her choices have brought.
Her resistance is weak, though, and this is the darkest aspect of Disney Princess: as perfectly conscious as she is of how wrong all of this is, she is in it with both feet because of her own choices. And now, she can only recriminate her own mistakes.
Devoured by the Public: The Flesh-Tearing Outro
Disney Princess ends with a series of terrifying sounds that fans appreciated immediately: beyond the lyrics, beyond the end of the melodic lines, the song fades into an auditory sequence that feels like pure horror. Everything stops, the atmosphere becomes heavy, and just like in a demon movie, we begin to hear the protagonist’s body being targeted.
We clearly hear flesh being torn apart, as if a horrible monster were devouring her. The end of the road seems to have arrived, for both Circle and Melanie Martinez: if both were constructed as industry products for the pure enjoyment of their audience, now the audience is devouring them without remorse, taking what it wants and treating them as what they have now become—simple objects for their pleasure.
The circle closes; the sonic finale of Disney Princess reconnects to the story of Circle in Possession, and darkness takes over. There is no happy ending in this story, and now the anticipation for the completion of the tale in the Hades album is higher than ever.
