Characters from old stories live and breathe in LE SSERAFIM’s music. The Little Mermaid and the Hydra. Eve, Psyche and the Bluebeard’s wife. Odile the black swan. Even Frankenstein’s monster. The kind of characters who live on through old fairy tales and ballets all carry with them the full history of their stories and the ends they ultimately met. But the characters who show up on a LE SSERAFIM album don’t settle for those endings—they claim new stories for themselves instead. The Little Mermaid becomes “The Great Mermaid,” choosing open waters over land. Frankenstein’s monster, who once proudly pointed to his fearlessness as a source of strength, now says it’s having someone to share his fears with that truly makes him strong. These rewritten stories become one of the pillars of LE SSERAFIM’s larger narrative of overcoming fear and moving forward. Here’s a look through LE SSERAFIM’s discography at how these familiar stories, and their long-established histories, have been rewritten.
A pearl that shines brighter than love
“The World Is My Oyster”—the opening track off LE SSERAFIM’s debut album “FEARLESS” and the title of the documentary chronicling their debut—takes its name from a line in the Shakespeare play “The Merry Wives of Windsor.” The documentary captures the painful process the group went through on their way to becoming the pearl that is LE SSERAFIM. “There’s no being satisfied in this world,” they say. “I want to hold this world in my hands.” Having claimed that pearl for themselves, their next goal is to take on the whole world. That’s why LE SSERAFIM sings “Telling me to hide my desire, that’s weird” in the song “FEARLESS” off the same album. Why apologize for your desires when you can embrace them?
Another track, “The Great Mermaid,” pulls off a similar move, dropping “Little” from the fairy tale’s original title and replacing it with “Great,” flipping the meaning of a character who’s long stood as a symbol of self-sacrifice. The original story frames the mermaid’s self-sacrifice as a noble kind of love, but LE SSERAFIM’s great version embraces her own desires instead: “I’m living my life / I’ll keep everything I want,” she sings, before rejecting the choices she’s been handed (“Give up my voice? crazy / Me disappear? What’s wrong with you”). For this reimagined mermaid carrying LE SSERAFIM’s message forward, a love where she has to give up on herself is nothing more than “twisted love.” In the original tale, the mermaid’s sacrifice is rewarded with a place in heaven, while in the Disney version from 1989, Ariel marries the prince and lives out her life on land. LE SSERAFIM’s mermaid takes the opposite approach, redefining the waters as the place where her ambitions come to fruition: “Just turn the ocean over to me / Smother the world with my sea.” She’s a figure who channels her desire and nerve into turning the whole world into her own personal ocean, believing that even when a “dream grows with no way of stoppin’ … it turns to truth” as long as she doesn’t give up. This is LE SSERAFIM’s new “Great Mermaid.”
A love that doesn’t require giving anything up, in other words, is a love that puts yourself first. “Sour Grapes” similarly speaks through the fox from Aesop’s fable “The Fox and the Grapes.” “I want to have you effortlessly / A romantic fairy tale,” LE SSERAFIM sings. The song doesn’t deny the romance of love, but the moment they sense they’ll get hurt chasing a love they “just can’t seem to grab,” they choose themselves over a love that demands sacrifice (“if that’s love / I don’t wanna taste it”). In the original fable, the fox is a foolish figure who dismisses the grapes he can’t reach by telling himself they must be sour anyway. The perspective in LE SSERAFIM’s song, by contrast, acknowledges the feelings and desire that come with love while still treating self as the top priority. Ultimately, the “FEARLESS” choice that LE SSERAFIM’s debut album makes is also a kind of self-directed love where desire and feelings are fully embraced. Becoming a pearl comes with its share of growing pains, but it’s worth it to make your dreams come true.
Falling as fuel for flight
“I’m not afraid of storms, for I’m learning how to sail my ship.” This is a line spoken by Amy, the youngest of the March sisters in Louisa May Alcott’s novel “Little Women,” just before she leaves home to get married. The line, representing personal growth, is quoted in the lyrics to “The Hydra,” the opening track off LE SSERAFIM’s album “ANTIFRAGILE.” The group pushes the idea further, daring listeners to “throw me into the black sea.” Even getting caught in a storm and pulled under is nothing more to them than “a dance danced while falling.” They take on the persona of the Hydra, the monster from Greek and Roman mythology that grows two heads back for every one that’s chopped off, and answer anyone who assumes they’ll break easily (“Do you think I’m fragile?”) with another dare: Go ahead, cut off my head (“Take a swing, here’s my neck”). They won’t be cut down to size—in fact, they’ll only grow stronger. That’s the power of being antifragile.
In the myth of the Hydra, its weakness is fire. Once Hercules seared the Hydra’s severed necks with fire, it finally stopped regenerating heads. But LE SSERAFIM turns even that deadly destruction into fuel for flight (“Set me ablaze,” they sing. “Pour more out, gasoline on fire, fly, rising through the flames”). The lead single “ANTIFRAGILE” captures this same attitude, welcoming hardship and criticism instead of shrinking away from them, turning both into fuel for personal growth: “Riding over the trail of thorns, you made me boost up.” Lines like “Don’t forget my pointe shoes I left behind” and “Don’t underestimate the path I’ve walked” reflect real confidence drawn from the group members’ real-world experiences. The dialog from “Little Women” and the myth of the Hydra take on new life in the music of LE SSERAFIM, a group that treats even storms and flames, the hardest of hardships, as fuel for their own growth.
An odyssey of the unforgiven
In the famous fairy tale, Cinderella waits for the prince to come for her, marrying him in the end to become a princess. LE SSERAFIM already told us to “toss away your fairy tale” life on “ANTIFRAGILE,” though, and on “UNFORGIVEN” (feat. Nile Rodgers)—the titular track off their follow-up album—they make it clear they’re going to stick to their guns even if it makes them the unforgivable bad guy: “If belief’s a sin, I’m a villain / I’m not that Cinderella type of a girl.” They push back against the world’s tendency to write them off as a “freak” and “a headache” as nothing more than “shabby hand-me-downs,” and with the line “Never asked for forgiveness or anything,” they break away from the usual plot where the villain has to seek redemption.
“Eve, Psyche & The Bluebeard’s wife,” another track off “UNFORGIVEN,” rewrites the fate of curious women of myth and folklore who break a rule and pay the price for it. In the Old Testament, Eve eats the forbidden fruit and is cast out of paradise. In Greco-Roman mythology, Psyche breaks her husband Eros’ one rule by trying to look upon him, and trouble follows. The wife in Charles Perrault’s fairy tale “Bluebeard,” too, defies her husband’s orders, opening the one forbidden room in the house, and nearly pays with her life. But LE SSERAFIM zeroes in on the inherent thrill of rule-breaking itself: “Don’t look wanna look / These taboos all around me … Girl wanna have fun.” They embrace the consequences head-on (“If this is a downfall we fall fall fall”) and make sure everyone knows they’ll get their way no matter how the story’s supposed to end (“I’m the only one that sets my rules”). For LE SSERAFIM, then, crossing a line drawn in the sand isn’t the start of a tragedy, it’s a rebellion in the name of fun. In the Old Testament, clothing becomes a symbol of Eve’s disgrace, a mark of sin passed down through the generations. For LE SSERAFIM, though, getting dressed up is a form of self-expression—a chance to show off what they’re into and enjoy themselves without worrying what anyone else thinks: “I’m a mess in distress but we’re still the best dressed. Fearless say yes we don’t dress to impress.”
“Fire in the belly,” the album’s closing track, plays on the scene in “Pinocchio” where he starts a fire from inside the belly of a giant sea creature in order to escape. Eve, Psyche, the Bluebeard’s wife, and Pinocchio all share one thing in common. Each of them is tugged around by rules like a puppet until they stand up for themselves and break free from what’s been holding them back (“Smile smile be a doll a little more … No no I’m not a doll”). On “Fire in the belly,” LE SSERAFIM issues a command: “Hey! Join my crew.” Just as they called out to their “UNFORGIVEN girls” and “UNFORGIVEN boys,” urging them to “cross the line with” them, LE SSERAFIM speaks up for everyone who falls outside the lines of society’s rigid expectations. Together, they set off to write the villains’ odyssey.
How the black swan becomes the lead
In the ballet “Swan Lake,” the Black Swan, Odile, appears before the prince posing as Odette, the White Swan. The prince’s love isn’t for Odile at all—it’s for Odette, as she exists only for as long as Odile is playing her. On “Swan Song,” off LE SSERAFIM’s album “EASY,” the group seems to lay out exactly why Odile had no choice but to become Odette. Facing whispers of “Blah, Blah, Blah, they’ll talk again,” being loved for who she really is starts to feel out of reach. A deeper dive into her feelings on EASY explains her choice: “To the world I’m halfway seraphim, yuh.” It’s self-awareness that she might never be loved for who she is entirely, paired with the hope that someone who’s half of an angel, at least, might still find love. In short, “Swan Song” paints a picture that anyone who’s stood up in front of a crowd knows all too well: the burden that comes with the persona you put on once onstage.
But pretending to be someone you’re not doesn’t stop the world from judging you. “Good Bones,” another track off the album, paints a second picture—one of the shadows waiting backstage: “At the backstage after the lights go out / all the shadows in the world cast over me … Inferiority / Rankings / Grades … Doubt” from “endlessly having to prove myself.” Just like the Black Swan wears the face of the White Swan to be loved, even after LE SSERAFIM sets their onstage personas aside, the scrutiny and endless comparisons hang around like unfinished business. “But I will not submerge,” they say. LE SSERAFIM chooses to stay onstage instead of letting the shadows swallow them up.
LE SSERAFIM’s onstage presence comes through most dramatically on the lead single “EASY”—you know, the one where they sing, “Yuh know that I make it look easy.” Odette may be the heroine of “Swan Lake,” but what audiences remember is Odile’s 32 fouettés, widely considered the hardest consecutive technical feat you can witness at the ballet. Odile is only there to imitate Odette, but for those 32 turns, she’s not a fake Odette anymore, even if she might look like her. In reality, she’s unfurling a story that’s uniquely hers. And just like the line “My scarred legs / Whip it whip never stop,” dance becomes a fierce act of proving yourself for LE SSERAFIM too, a group constantly asked to put on new personas onstage (“Up on the stage, sparks fly off my body / Pull up and I rip it up like ballet”). In this way, the story of the Black Swan, once seen merely as an obstacle to true love in “Swan Lake,” takes on new life through “EASY,” becoming a narrative that speaks for the blood, sweat, and tears hidden behind such dazzling performances.
Hand in hand, beyond the edge of fear
In Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel “Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus,” Victor Frankenstein creates life, only to later despise and finally abandon his own creation, branding it a monster. Cast off by his creator and society alike, the monster makes a declaration: “I am fearless, and therefore powerful.” But soon after, the monster spirals into endless isolation and ruin.
LE SSERAFIM, whose name is itself an anagram of “I’M FEARLESS,” said as much in their debut single. The group revisits the idea of fear on their second studio album, “‘PUREFLOW’ pt.1,” released earlier this year. The lyrics to “Pureflow,” the album’s intro, take Frankenstein’s monster’s words and change the subject while also negating the fearlessness: “For we are not FEARLESS, and therefore powerful.” By adding that “not” in front of “FEARLESS,” LE SSERAFIM openly admits to underlying weaknesses (“You and me both, we’re all weak inside”). On another track, “iffy iffy,” they don’t deny their fear, they embrace it: “Now my fears / Ride on the same boat, my friends”. And in “CELEBRATION,” they make a toast—“It’s time to say goodbye to when I was fearless”—so they’re able to redefine themselves at last in “Creatures” as “free, covered in scars.”
In “Frankenstein,” the monster doesn’t seek revenge against Victor by killing him. Instead, he strips away the people around his creator, dragging him down into the same isolation he himself has felt. What if Victor and the monster had understood each other? What if they’d reached out to one another? “Pureflow” plays out almost like an alternate version where the two become friends—two lonely souls who recognize the pain in one another and choose to stand together. “If you’re having a hard time, do it on your own,” the song goes on. “Why make everyone else suffer? / Wanna be saved? Do it yourself.” And that question’s met with another question: “You and me both, we’re all weak inside / What does that leave you with? / An ounce of pride? / Seriously?” The wall they built to hide their fear turns out to have come from wanting the other person to reach out all along: “In reality, what you want is someone to break in / We’re the exact same.” That’s why LE SSERAFIM says thank you—“For holding my hand and falling with me / For opening up your raw wounds to me”—before asking to “get swept away together.” In the end, they’re strong not because they have no fear, but because they have someone to share it with.
“For we are not FEARLESS, and therefore powerful.”