We should have known that Romy “I tried to charter a helicopter from New York to Maryland on my dad’s credit card because I wanted to have dinner with my camp friend†Mars is ambitious. Only a teenager so bold to risk it all to reunite with her bestie (and angering her parents, Sofia Coppola and Thomas Mars) would also have the gall to enter the pop arena during an incredibly stuffed release season. Mars surprise launched her music career on May 22 with the single “Stuck Up†and its B-side, “From a Distance,†a little under a week after the nepo grandbaby quietly made her red-carpet debut at the Cannes Film Festival premiere of Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis.
If bedroom-pop tracks feel familiar, it might be because Mars enlisted the Phoebe Bridgers–approved musician Claud to produce the tracks (Mars is the sole writer for “Stuck Up†and shares a writing credit with Claud for “From a Distanceâ€). Mars injects the songs with a Virgin Suicides dose of teen angst — the first lyric off the lead single is “I’m sitting on the edge of the pool / until now summer’s been so cruel†— reminding us that the visionary behind make a vodka sauce pasta with me because I’m grounded is, in fact, 17. Should the other pop girls be scared?