'Mermaids' was originally intended to be finished and recorded as part of the sessions for 2022's Dance Fever album. When Florence Welch broke her foot (again...) during the first of two London O2 Arena gigs back in November 2022, she was forced to postpone the rest of the UK tour until February, during which time she managed to not only finish and record 'Mermaids' with Glass Animals' Dave Bayley, but also perform 'My Love' on Strictly Come Dancing in December, albeit sitting down and wearing a floor length dress to presumably hide her poor foot.
From such serendipity are legends made. When 'Mermaids' was released in early 2023 it was teasingly trailed via a series of Instagram videos, including one of Welch striding about a churchyard, singing "England is only ever grey or green, the girls glitter, striding glorious and coatless in the rain" and another featuring her in the bath with a mermaid tail and fangs, singing angelically "I thought that I was hungry for love. Maybe I was just hungry for blood."
The song, when it arrived, felt like a five minute synth opera made up of distinct acts and moods, taking us from Welch's eerily high opening vocals to her reminiscences of her teenage and twenties drinking days in London (she has said that lockdown was a particularly difficult time to stay sober) to feral mermaids "Climbing the slats of Brighton pier" and turning English maidens into bloodthirsty hedonistic sirens. It ends with carnage on the dance floor. It was at once typically Florence + The Machine, but also strangely outside of anything Welch and the band have ever done before. It's a song that needs revisiting and, even then, we'll probably never entirely figure it out. Which is probably as it should be.
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