Music / Weyes Blood

I want to stop the war between the broken lovers
It's not something you gotta earn from each other
It just comes naturally, it's there for the taking
It's a given thing, our love everlasting...

—"A Given Thing"

Influences: Joni Mitchell, Carpenters, Radiohead, Enya, The Velvet Underground, Wolf Eyes, Inca Ore, Harry Nilsson

Weyes Blood is the stage name of Singer-Songwriter Natalie Laura Mering (born June 11, 1988). Her music combines influences from Baroque Pop, chamber pop, and psychedelic folk and harkens back to music of the 1960s and 70s.

She was originally a Noise Rock musician and was bassist to the experimental band Jackie-O Motherfucker and the singer to the band Satanized. She has gone through multiple changes in her music throughout her career, as well as changing her stage name multiple times, from Wise Blood to Weyes Bluhd to Weyes Blood.

Her most popular and critically acclaimed album is 2019's Titanic Rising, which brought her new fame.

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Discography:

• The Outside Room (2011)
• The Innocents (2014)
• Front Row Seat to Earth (2016)
• Titanic Rising (2019)
• And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow (2022)

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And In the Darkness, Hearts A-trope:

• Book Ends: The last song on Titanic Rising, "Nearer To Thee," has a violin quartet playing the melody of "A Lot's Gonna Change," the opener. Also an example of Album Closure.
• Books vs. Screens: Addressed in "Movies," portraying herself as so obsessed with movies that "books don't exist anymore."
• Color Motif: Titanic Rising and Hearts Aglow are apparently part of a trilogy of albums—both of them have deep royal blue as the primary color on the album cover.
• Cover Version:
  • She performed a cover of "You’re no Good" for the soundtrack of Minions: The Rise of Gru.
  • Her cover of the jazz standard "When You're Smiling" appears on the fifth episode of the National Geographic series A Small Light.
  • She's featured on a cover of Joni Mitchell's "For Free" with Lana Del Rey and Zella Day.
• Epic Rocking: Has several songs over the six minute mark. The Outside Room consists entirely of epic rockers, including one song that's nine minutes.
• Escapism: The main theme of "Movies."
  Real life doesn't seem to shine like that screen.
• Ethereal White Dress: Wears one on the cover of And In the Darkness, Hearts Aglow, and when performing live.
• Face on the Cover: Her face appears on all of her album covers.
• Genre Roulette: She has performed a variety of genres, such as noise rock, baroque pop, chamber pop, folk, soft rock, psychedelic rock, and others.
• Genre Shift: She started as a Noise Rock musician but eventually started making baroque pop music by the time she released Front Row Seat to Earth in 2016.
• Genre Throwback: Her music takes heavy inspiration from the Baroque Pop artists of the 1960s and 70s, such as Joni Mitchell and Carpenters.
• Green Aesop: Some songs from Titanic Rising have an environmental message.
• Grief Song: "Picture Me Better," about a friend of hers who committed suicide.
  If I could have seen you just once more
  Tell you how much you're adored
• Instrumentals: She has had multiple instrumental songs, including the title track of Titanic Rising.
  • "In Holy Flux," which is basically just an ambient track.
• Heart Light: In the title and on the cover for And In the Darkness, Hearts Aglow.
• Just Friends: "Maybe Love"
• Noise Rock: Her early music was this before she eventually moved into Baroque Pop in Front Row Seat to Earth and onwards.
• Pastiche: Several of her music videos are affectionate parodies of Hollywood tropes, such as Vaudeville for "It's Not Just Me, It's Everybody," teen slasher films for "Everyday," and gothic fairytales in "Twin Flame."
• Sequel Song: "Titanic Risen."
• Singer-Songwriter: She writes and performs her own music.
• Stage Name: Her original stage name was Wise Blood, but she ended up changing it to Weyes Bluhd and finally Weyes Blood.
• Stock Footage: The video for "God Turn Me Into a Flower" is fast-paced montage of this, occasionally intercut with Weyes Blood in her Ethereal White Dress.
• Symbolic Serene Submersion: On the cover for Titanic Rising. Also in the music video for "Movies," where all the movie goers jump into the movie to swim with Natalie.
• Roger Rabbit Effect: The video for "It's Not Just Me, It's Everybody." The animated character is a jealous Hollywood Tone-Deaf cellphone that gets the Vaudeville Hook.
• Title Track:
  • Titanic Rising features an instrumental song of the same name.
  • And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow continues this trend by featuring two title track songs in the form of the ethereal "Hearts Aglow" and the chamber music-ish but albeit very short 15-second instrumental "And in the Darkness".
• Underwater Ruins: The cover for Titanic Rising shows her floating in what appears to be a child's bedroom, completely submerged underwater.