Songs of the year, number 2: Florence + The Machine - Mermaids (Official Lyric Video)

'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. 

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.