When I Decided To Wage Holy War

Florence + The Machine “Girls Against God”

The lyrics of “Girls Against God” were written mid-lockdown, the musings of a woman gone a bit stir-crazy and resenting God for putting her in circumstances where all she could do is dwell on the past without being able to move towards the future. Florence Welch is a singer with a powerful voice that can make anything sound heavy and important, so it’s interesting to hear her sing about feeling pathetic and powerless here. The song opens with her admitting that she never feels comfortable being loved because it makes her feel trapped, and then she’s singing about feeling trapped in her home, and then flashing back to a Tom Vek basement show when she was too young to act on her feelings whether they were positive or negative. The song builds to a declaration of war on God, a symbolic rejection of impotence and passivity, but a lot of what makes the song poignant is her knowing this is just another way of doing nothing in the face of something that feels impossible. It’s just coming from the perspective of someone who knows enough that you have to find a way to claim power, even if it’s all just in the mind.

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