With the calendar racing toward Memorial Day and several pop girls jockeying for the top spot on our picnic playlists, what better time to release one’s debut EP? That, it seems, is the thinking of Romy Mars, heir to the Coppola cinematic legacy and now, apparently, an aspiring singer-songwriter. On Wednesday, fresh from a widely applauded appearance at her grandfather’s side at Cannes, Mars dropped “Stuck Up,” a two-song EP that shows our girl striking a sultry pose in a scuba mask on the album cover.
You probably remember Mars, who’s the 17-year-old daughter of Sofia Coppola and Phoenix front man Thomas Mars, from the incredible guerrilla TikTok she made last year about cooking penne à la vodka while she was grounded for trying to visit a camp friend via helicopter charter. Since then, she’s spent a lot of time hanging out with the hot star of her mom’s movie, Jacob Elordi. Last week, she joined her grandfather Francis Ford Coppola in France to debut his long-awaited, batshit-crazy movie Megalopolis, a film in which she reportedly has three lines. She appears to have had an incredible weekend that involved both being pinched on the cheek by her grandpa and standing next to Adam Driver for long stretches of time.
And now, Mars appears to be dabbling in both sides of her creative heritage. It’s not clear whether her father, who leads the French indie-pop band Phoenix, helped her with any connects for this recording, but the EP’s credits list Mikey Hart, a popular producer who often works with Taylor Swift and Jack Antonoff, and bedroom pop singer-songwriter Claud, who was the first artist to sign with Phoebe Bridgers’ record label. As for the sound, I’m putting it under the sad-girl indie pop umbrella of Gracie Abrams, Clairo, Girl In Red, etc. (At least someone in the Coppola household is listening to Mitski.) It’s no “Espresso,” but it has an ambient, moody appeal. Do I hear Best New Artist buzz?
