"[6] A video released for "Merrie Land" featured Albarn[7] dressed as a ventriloquist's dummy singing and gesturing in front of a backdrop of pastoral images and English landscapes.

The track features "organ, bassoon, recorder, and a British Invasion-style ensemble pop hook [which] lend the song a cheery boardwalk shine, undercut by Albarn's knotty lyrics of conspiratorial and repressive governance.

[10] In an interview with The Guardian, the band members admitted that Merrie Land shares creative attributes with its predecessor, The Good, the Bad & the Queen, but stylistically the two are dissimilar.

Where the band's first album was "murky" in its depiction of London, Merrie Land "[evokes] the contorted confusion of Brexit", and "widens its focus beyond the capital and has an even sharper sense of place.

[11] NME held a similar position, referring to it as "muddled" and stating that "beyond the title track and ‘Lady Boston’, it begins to wear thin quicker than a seagull nosediving to your soggy paper of chips".