Dance Fever- "Mermaids"
Added 2023-08-24 23:08:16 +0000 UTCI discuss the diction, imagery, alliteration and symbolism in this Dance Fever track.
Comments
Yes! These are great observations and connections! I think a mermaid is a perfect symbol for everything Florence is trying to convey!
English Teacher KP
2023-09-02 06:09:24 +0000 UTCNo need to apologize! I really enjoyed reading this! It's been probably a decade since I read the original tale. But you're right-- this is sort of like the inverse of the story. I never would have put that together, so thank you!
English Teacher KP
2023-09-02 06:08:37 +0000 UTCSo you're actually correct, but the references to The Little Mermaid are very sneakily hid throughout the song. In the original Tale, The Little Mermaid is about to come of age, and when mermaids do that are allowed once a year to come up from the sea. When it's her turn to go her first time up she meets a prince whom she saves from drowning and falls in love with him, but can't bear to not be able to see him again for another year. So she meets with the sea witch who grants her the ability to have legs, but at the cost of her voice and the pain of walking is described like knives in her feet, however there's more! If she can convince the prince to love her, she can live among the surface permanently, but she fails to do so. The Mermaid's sisters bring her a knife from the sea witch and tell her if she can stab him in the heart with the blade, she will avoid turning into sea foam, and be able to go back to the sea as a mermaid. She refuses and throws herself into the sea turning into sea foam. Florence does an inverse of this, where She takes the deal to "sacrifice a human heart" so that she may return to the sea and come back the next year, realizing she didn't love the men, or the sailors, or a prince, but loved to dance and be among the people. The sacrifice of which is these poor men. Sorry for the wall of text π
Aeros Sylphid
2023-08-31 12:47:09 +0000 UTCA few things that stood out to me in this listen of "Mermaids": This song really highlights the kind of twofold nature of sacrifice that is hinted at throughout the album. On the one hand, we have the speaker sacrificing one kind of life for another kind of life, and sacrificing herself or parts of herself for art; on the other hand, we have the men whose hearts are sacrificed, who are "eaten alive" by the speaker because, as she says in "King," "you need to go to war to find material to sing." So the mermaid lures these men in and devours them on purpose, and these relationships are sacrificed to become songs. I also like that the mermaid is a liminal creature, part human and part fish, to begin with, and then you put her on the land among humans for a limited amount of time-- in the rain, so she's partly on land and partly in water-- and the speaker accordingly talks about feeling "somewhat out of place if not for the drunkenness"-- which is keeping her and others cheerfully oblivious to how out of place she is. I think this is also interesting that, in the past, Florence has used drowning and underwater imagery to sing about her struggles with addiction and mental health, and the mermaid is a creature who lives in the water.
Erin
2023-08-25 16:54:26 +0000 UTCYes love Mermaids! I believe Florence said it was inspired when she was in the car returning home from a tour and seeing all the girls going out on nights out looking like beautiful mermaids. It's a bit of a celebration of British drinking culture with mermaids thrown in! You'll be relieved to know that she doesn't use her monster voice for Morning Elvis, but a lot of the lyric videos are incorrect so you might be better going on genius lyrics for the correct versions! Hope you look into the rest of her albums at some point too β€οΈ
Beclou
2023-08-25 08:41:04 +0000 UTC
