A brief, baffled discussion of mermaids and sirens in music

As regular readers will be aware, the release of a new Florence + The Machine song tends to be a bit of an event. It's especially an event if it's been signposted and hinted at for weeks beforehand by:

Exhibit 1: A TikTok of Florence Welch striding through what appears to be a churchyard in full winter coat, dress and boots while singing about how England is "Only ever grey or green" over a heavy synth track.

Exhibit 2: A TikTok of Welch in the bath in full mermaid tail, complete with fangs, singing in her highest, most eerie register.

I don't know who is orchestrating the Florence + The Machine publicity campaign for Dance Fever, and it's related tracks, but, bloody hell, they like to tease. 

Anyway, 'Mermaids' was released yesterday.

Coming in at just over four and a half minutes, it's a highly cinematic dark synth pop opus delivered in five acts which includes possibly my favourite lyric of the year so far:

"Hugging girls who smelled like Britney Spears... and coconuts"

In 'Mermaids', Welch is clearly drawing parallels between some of the more sinister mythic and folkloric depictions of mermaids and sirens and the activities and attitudes of drunken young women on a night time blitzkrieg around town.  

Girls who glitter while "Striding glorious and coatless in the rain" well on their way to a "Cheerful oblivion" that Welch misses despite herself.

In making this link, she also (it is assumed) unwittingly reminded me Honeyblood's 'Sea Hearts': A song about two young women having an equally boozy night out on the town, which also references mermaids and sirens, and which is well served by the accompanying video in which a mermaid emerges from the sea and goes to a house party/bachanalia in Glasgow. 

"We're the breakers and the waves" sings Stina Tweeddale "And we break hearts, break hearts, break hearts that get in our way"

I've been trying to come up with other examples that combine the fearsome qualities of drunk young women with the equally fearsome qualities of mermaids and sirens, but I haven't come up with any more yet. Should any suggest themselves to you, please let me know.

Songs of sirens and mermaids in the more general sense go back through the decades, centuries and millennia: From the sirens who sang in order to shipwreck sailors in Homer's The Odyssey, to a folksong about mermaids that seems to have existed in the early 20th Century in both the US and UK, to 'Song To The Siren' (both the Tim Buckley original and This Mortal Coil cover version) and - in recent years - more cuddly singing mermaids such as Disney's Ariel (The Little Mermaid) and Julia Donaldson and Lydia Monk's The Singing Mermaid, adapted as a theatre production for young children by Barb Jungr and Samantha Lane in recent years. 

Naturally, the beautiful but sinister mermaid and siren have a long history in art and literature more generally: As both Florence Welch and Stina Tweeddale are no doubt aware. And it's been fun to dive into it in anticipation of this blog post.

UPDATE: Since I wrote this post, fellow Florence + The Machine fan InkLungs has made a Spotify playlist on the theme of sirens and mermaids.