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“Cognitive Dissonance”, the record’s opening track and emotional entry point, captures the push-and-pull that defines both the song and the wider project. “This is the song that is the most me,” she says, describing it as one of the first tracks written for the album. From the outset, her high, lilting vocals drift across expansive synths, cinematic in scale, before the track gradually tightens its grip.
The song takes its name from the psychological concept of holding two conflicting beliefs at once, an idea she applies directly to romantic desire. “‘Cognitive Dissonance’ is about two conflicting values that you equally believe in, so it creates this tension and struggle within yourself,” she explains. “Maybe he’s a bad person but I still want him. Maybe I’m a bad person for feeling so conflicted.” Lyrics that plead “think you should break my heart and run from me / think you should write me a letter saying sorry” frame longing as knowingly self-destructive, vacillating between vulnerability and provocation.
That volatility is mirrored in the song’s structure. What begins as expansive and romantic slowly morphs into something more tense and unsettled. “At the end there’s a weird change in melody and timing, because I couldn’t pick between the two, which represents that cognitive dissonance.” The shift feels deliberate and unresolved, trading beauty for unease as the track closes.
Sonically, mermaidonmars draws from artists who blur intimacy and experimentation. She cites early Grimes, Imogen Heap, Björk, and Melanie Martinez as influences – artists who blur intimacy and experimentation. That approach runs through “Cognitive Dissonance”, where sweetness is repeatedly destabilised by shifts in rhythm and texture, allowing the song to remain unresolved rather than neatly cathartic.
Written in the aftermath of a turbulent relationship, the track reflects an addiction to emotional extremes. “I was just coming out of this toxic relationship... it creates a rush like drugs, you get addicted to that feeling.” Even in a calmer, healthier dynamic, the craving lingered. “I was still craving that high and the pain of the last relationship. When I’m heartbroken I write the best stuff.”
That tension extends across Spellbook. “The entire album is an ethereal softness mixed with hardness and darkness, the good and the bad,” she states. The record unfolds like a series of interconnected spaces. “I see the album as an old house with different coloured rooms… almost an escape room where the last room looks like your childhood bedroom.” Visually, that world draws from television as much as music. She cites American Horror Story: Coven, particularly the character Madison Montgomery, as a reference point, reinforcing the album’s fixation on feminine power, vengeance, and transformation.
Alongside her music, mermaidonmars has built a devoted online audience, though she’s careful not to let metrics dictate her creative direction. “On my main TikTok people just want me to be this internet baddie, but I feel like this is just the beginning for me,” she says. “I have my core fans and I know they support me with everything I do, so that gives me a feeling of freedom.”
As the opening track on Spellbook, “Cognitive Dissonance” doesn’t offer closure. Instead, it invites listeners into a witchy and mysterious world where desire, guilt, softness, and volatility are allowed to coexist – unresolved, yet fully felt.
English (US) · 