On August 14, 2015 Melanie Martinez released her first studio album with Atlantic Record's. The album was called "Crybaby". The album debuted in the top 10 on the Billboard Hot 200 albums chart, placing a spot at #6 with 40,000 total copies sold in its first week.  It also topped the Billboard Alternative Albums chart by dominating at  #1. Melanie began recording for an unreleased EP shortly after being eliminated from The Voice. By 2013, the EP was completed and was ready to be released, however, Melanie later scrapped it after recording her song "Dollhouse" which led her to change her mind about the unreleased EP to be released and, started  working on a new album. In January 2014 Melanie Martinez confirmed the name of the new album she was working on ("Crybaby"). In May 2014 Melanie Martinez released her debut EP Dollhouse, and announced that summer that she hoped to have her album out around October. However, Melanie instead released the music video for her song "Carousel" on October 15th, 2014, and postponed her release date for her album, and stated that she hoped to have it out in the spring of 2015. The first single from her debut album was "Pity Party" and was confirmed on May 27th, 2015. The music video was accidentally leaked by Melanie herself on May 29th, 2015; however, Melanie later said on Twitter that she was happy and excited for the fans who had already saw it and promised there was "more to come" during her live stream on June 1st, 2015. Pity Party was officially released as the first single from the album on June 1st, 2015, the day of Melanie's livestream. During the livestream, Melanie announced that the release date of Cry Baby would be in August. She also revealed that the album would be available to pre-order soon. The second single, "Soap", was confirmed in late June, and it was announced soon before it was to be released as the second single from the album on July 10th, 2015, with the one-shot music video being released the same day. On July 16th, 2015, the album art and release date were leaked on Amazon, although the release date was false. The following day, on July 17th, 2015, the album art was officially revealed, and merch bundles were available to pre-order on Melanie's website, with the digital pre-order on July 24th, 2015. Before then, the tracklist of the album was leaked, although the websites that leaked it replaced "Play Date" with "Half Hearted". The final tracklist was officially revealed with the album pre-order on July 24th, 2015. Starting on July 27th, 2015, Melanie released a snippet of each song (apart from the songs on the deluxe edition) on her Instagram. On July 28th, 2015, Melanie released the snippet for "Sippy Cup" and announced that it would be released on July 31st, 2015. SPIN Magazine premiered the music video on July 30th, 2015 and "Sippy Cup" was released as the third and final single from the album the day after. The album was officially released on August 14th, 2015. The CD was packaged as a storybook, with jewel case CDs available later. Both a picture disk and a standard black vinyl were also released. Cassettes were then advertised as being in yellow, blue, and pink. There is also a less common green cassette. All physical copies of the album are the standard explicit, with the deluxe and clean being digital exclusives.

Cry Baby's Extra Clutter, an EP on vinyl with the album's 3 deluxe tracks as well as the Christmas single "Gingerbread Man" was released exclusively at Urban Outfitters on November 25th, 2016.

The Cry Baby Coloring Book, a coloring book with illustrations from the storybook as well as illustrations for the bonus tracks, was released at Barnes & Noble a few days after the release of the Cry Baby's Extra Clutter EP on November 29th, 2016.

Cry Baby Perfume Milk, a perfume stylized after the album, was released on February 17th, 2017.

In 2020, the album started getting popular again due to the bonus track "Play Date" rising in popularity on the video sharing app TikTok