Partners in Crime: Uninhibited Relief and the Promise of Freedom in “Florida!!!”

Don’t we all just need a vacation sometimes?

A duet between Taylor Swift and Florence Welch was an unrealized dream of mine from 2012 up until the recent release of The Tortured Poets Department. “Florida!!!” featuring Florence + The Machine is the second of the two collaborations on the album, and functions as a bit of a sequel to the first. Sonically closer to a Florence + The Machine song than anything else in Swift’s discography, this is another TTPD song about escapism, more tongue-in-cheek than devastating, for a change: it captures the fantasy of going to Florida to run from the past—and the law.

My Reputation’s Never Been Worse

Swift establishes the speaker’s fugitive status¹ in the opening verse: “You can beat the heat if you beat the charges, too / They said I was a cheat, I guess it must be true.” Her syntactic alignment of “heat” with “charges” reveals the double meaning of the former—the literal “heat” of Florida’s climate as well as the notion of “taking the heat” in terms of responsibility for a crime. The speaker notes that she won’t have to face any repercussions if she evades the criminal “charges” against her by going to Florida. From a figurative viewpoint, this culpability can also represent “scandal,” as it does in “But Daddy I Love Him”: “We came back when the heat died down.” This interpretation ties in well with the rumors that the speaker is a “cheat.” Whether or not these claims have any merit, she has given up on defending herself and sarcastically admits “it must be true.” Whatever the general population says about her becomes accepted as fact; her loss of agency regarding her reputation leaves her longing for an escape.

The speaker then complains that her “friends all smell like weed or little babies.” The people she surrounds herself with are in drastically different life stages, and she doesn’t fit in with either group: “this city reeks of driving myself crazy.” The references to sense of smell tie these two lyrics, and thus the “friends” and the “city,” together. The scents that the speaker describes “reek,” and this sensory overload makes her feel “crazy.” She concludes that she needs to get out of the “city,” synonymous with its people, to feel like herself again. As a continuation of “Fortnight,” this song similarly touches on the theme of insanity, where the solution to such apparently self-imposed mental concerns is simply going “away.”

Temporary Fix

In the pre-chorus, the speaker reiterates this feeling of being an outsider: “Little did you know your home’s really only / A town you’re just a guest in / So you work your life away just to pay / For a time-share down in Destin.” To the speaker’s surprise, her “city” doesn’t feel like “home” anymore. Instead, she’s being pushed out, like a “guest” overstaying her welcome in a place she doesn’t belong. Swift expresses a similar sentiment of rejection in “my tears ricochet”: “I can go anywhere I want / Anywhere I want, just not home.” In light of this ostracism, the speaker devotes all her energy to saving up for her Floridian escape in Destin, a popular tourist destination. Nevertheless, Swift alludes to the impermanence of this solution with the term “time-share,” a partial-ownership property that is split between different people throughout the year. All the speaker can afford is a vacation home that won’t always be available for her to use.

Like the “miracle move-on-drug” with its “temporary” effects in “Fortnight,” for the speaker, “Florida / Is one hell of a drug.” This metaphor juxtaposes the fantasy of escapism with the reality of its inability to permanently solve problems. Like a drug, Florida provides a feeling of relief so good the speaker asks: “Can I use you up?” Despite the escape being a place, which shouldn’t be able to run out, the speaker’s comparison indicates that she can only “use” a finite amount.

Hurricane Florence

Welch comes in on the second verse, and it becomes a dialogue between the two distinct voices. She begins with a callback to her song “Hurricane Drunk”: “The hurricane with my name when it came / I got drunk and I dared it to wash me away.” There was, in fact, a storm called Hurricane Florence that struck the Southeastern United States in 2018. This reference might point to the hurricane being another externalization of the speaker—one that causes her both fear and excitement as she “dare[s]” it to take her over.² The internal rhyme and alliteration (in bold) in these lyrics replicate the image of the storm crashing in and sweeping her up. In the next line, however, she is “[b]arricaded in the bathroom with a bottle of wine,” the harsh “b” consonants blocking her in as her confidence wanes.

Safe from the storm, the speaker and her “ghosts” have “a hell of a time.” This phrasing echoes that of the chorus, where Florida is “one hell of a drug,” implicitly comparing it to the “bottle of wine” as well. Welch applies the concept of escape to sheltering from the hurricane with the “ghosts” of past relationships. Rather than being alone and scared, she is “haunted” but “feeling just fine” among her memories. A departure from much of Swift’s discography,³ this time being “haunted” has a connotation of comfort.

Murder? Again?

In the following lines, Welch’s speaker acknowledges Swift’s: “All my girls got their lace and their crimes / And your cheating husband disappeared, well / No one asks any questions here.” Despite being dainty and delicate in appearance like “lace,” the speaker’s “girls” are actually devious criminals—everyone has their own ghosts. This is the incredible moment where Welch reveals the fate of the speaker’s husband from “Fortnight” (where the lyric is: “My husband’s cheating / I want to kill him”). Running away to Florida, where there are no “questions,” seems to be working; just like in “no body no crime,” the first speaker has gotten away with murder.

In the extended portion of the second verse, Welch’s speaker contemplates her own ghosts again: “So I did my best to lay to rest / All of the bodies that have ever been on my body / And in my mind, they sink into the swamp / Is that a bad thing to say in a song?” For her, the escape to Florida is an opportunity to get over whoever is in her past. In these lyrics, she dehumanizes these individuals by turning them into corpses. Welch couples the morbid image of laying dead “bodies” to rest with the sexual connotation of “body,” summing up the life and death of these relationships in a single phrase. The speaker then imagines dumping the bodies into the Florida swampland, but, in a witty moment of self-awareness, catches herself and asks the listener if she should really be admitting to these murderous fantasies.

The second pre-chorus is a variation of the first; this time, the speaker’s “home” is where she’ll “get arrested.” If she doesn’t “beat the charges” by leaving, her “town” will hold her accountable. Whereas the first pre-chorus is like politely asking a guest to leave, this one actually names the first speaker a criminal and turns her into a fugitive. Her solution is to “pack [her] life away just to wait out / The shitstorm back in Texas.” The phrase “wait out” implies a hope to one day return home (to Texas, apparently) once everything dies down, again acknowledging the impermanence of the escape.

Absolute Surrender

The bridge of the song is made up of a call and response between the two speakers: “I need to forget, so take me to Florida / I’ve got some regrets, I’ll bury them in Florida.” The first speaker restates her use of Florida as a drug to “forget” her problems. Similarly, the second speaker decides to “bury” her “regrets,” just like the bodies that “sink into the swamp.” Swift sings the third line: “Tell me I’m despicable, say it’s unforgivable.” Regardless of the truth, the speaker expects people to shame her for the crimes they suspect her of committing; this brings back the reputation theme from the first verse. Just like in the album reputation, Swift embraces negative public opinions through these imperative verbs. Welch then sings: “At least the dolls are beautiful.” This might be a reference to the “girls” with “lace” in the second verse, who are “beautiful” in spite of their “crimes.” Assuming this includes the other speaker, it marks a telling connection to “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys,” where the value of the “doll” is determined by her appearance.

The speakers them sum up the desperation instilled in the drug metaphor: “What a crash, what a rush, fuck me up, Florida.” The overwhelming feeling encapsulated by these short, punchy phrases is mirrored musically, with the song’s instrumentation and production coming to a climax like the high it describes. Swift fleshes out this musical idea with a few euphoric ad libs, before the lyrics: “Love left me like this and I don’t want to exist / So take me to Florida.” For the first speaker, the revelation that lost love put her in this state calls back to “Fortnight” once again and highlights the gravity of her anguish. The desperation in these sentiments is also reflected in the speaker’s passivity: it’s “take me,” not “I’ll go.” Florida is so far removed from the real world and its responsibilities that it’s equated with not existing at all.

Ultimately, then, this song is an anthem of self-indulgent fantasy celebrating the relief that comes with leaving your problems behind in another place. Despite the bittersweet undertone in the fact that the speakers can’t stay in Florida forever, the song keeps this moment alive indefinitely. With the final repetitions of the pre-chorus and chorus, we’re left with the hopeful image of our fugitives running off together and not looking back.

1. She explores a similar idea on songs like "Run" and "Getaway Car."

2. Welch has similar references to drowning/getting washed away in several other songs, such as "Drumming Song," "Swimming," "What the Water Gave Me," and "Never Let Me Go."

3. "Haunted," "...Ready For It?", "Death By A Thousand Cuts," "my tears ricochet," "right where you left me," etc.