Singer-songwriter Florence Welch, lead singer of Florence + the Machine, sits down Apple Music’s Zane Lowe for an intimate interview celebrating the release of the band's sixth studio album, Everybody Scream. In the conversation, Welch opens up about writing the soon-to-be released record, talking about how she explored mysticism and the occult when writing the album and how the creative process became a healing journey for her. She also opens up about having an ectopic miscarriage while on stage and finishing her tour shortly after.
Florence Welch tells Apple Music about why she had to make this album at this moment
Florence Welch: I think there was basically an urgency to this record. It came out of me in this furious burst. And it's one of those records where if I hadn't have put it out now, it never would've come out because I think how I felt about things is so specific to this moment in time, and this record roared out of me and it was a record that was made almost like a coping mechanism. And I think, as with all records, there's usually a period of time where you think it's never going to get finished or never going to get made, or you can't find the right person to work with, or you thought you were going to work with one producer and then they're not available, and then you're like, "Oh God, who am I going to-"
Zane Lowe: And you're an infrastructure and someone else-
Florence Welch: And then, you think the record is just not happening. And there was this like, "Oh, well, we can delay it." I was like, "There's no delaying this one. It's either now or this record never comes out. I will not feel the way that I feel about this in a couple of years." So, there was this ferocious urgency to this one. I almost made it in a fog, I think. I did think I was still processing what happened to me and I had a level of PTSD that almost like when the record was finished, I was like, "Wait, what just happened?"
Florence Welch on going into the studio with full songs written
A few of them were written in the room. But yeah, mostly my process is having a lot of words. I feel quite strange if I come to the studio without words. Usually what compels me to go into a studio is I have a whole song written out or I think I had 'One of the Greats' was a really long poem that I started writing on tour. And actually, yeah, I started sharing a notes app with Mark Bowen from Idles. And yeah, I think things started getting added to there. It was 'One of the Greats’, ‘Kraken’, I had ‘Buckle' was knocking around and the only thing was on that thing that we really didn't have was a song for 'Everybody Scream' I just had the title. So, I was like, Florence + The Machine, 'Everybody Scream' song to come, but this is the song. So I do have a tendency to start with words. And then, sometimes that can actually be hard because then structuring, it's so set in what it is that finding what it is musically can be sometimes tricky. Like, 'Oh, okay, this song is fully formed, but what the f*** does the music sound like?' I'm really fascinated to see people who sing gibberish and do the melody first. And I think it's quite rare for me... I think I've only done that once or twice. It's quite rare for me to do that. Usually, there is a story or a poem that has taken shape and that's what I'm coming into the studio with. And then, you have to create the cinema. You have to, with the music, create the visual of what that song is saying.
Florence Welch talks about the inspiration behind 'One of the Greats'
Zane Lowe: You said you wrote 'One of the Greats', or started at least, or a poem, you were writing it when you were on tour. That song is hilarious and caustic and defiant and vulnerable, and all of these things that I hear in it at least, which is just this stream of consciousness of-
Florence Welch: Stream of consciousness rant.
Zane Lowe: Like, “F*** you and f*** you and I'm awesome, but man, maybe I'm not awesome enough and how do I get awesome?" And it just is awesome.
Florence Welch: "Yeah. Hey, why don't you fancy me?"
Zane Lowe: 100%. So, what's going on in the middle of tour or when you're on tour where that comes to mind and you have this feeling of inadequacy meets defiance?
Florence Welch: Yeah, I think it sums up the song quite well. I mean, the song is constantly throwing itself under the bus as well. It's like "I'm this, I'm that," and about the cycle of, "I'm the best. I'm the f***ing worst. I'm the best..." which I think is part of making things. I do a lot of writing on tour actually because I like to write what I'm in motion or daydreaming and there's dead time. But yeah, I was thinking about greatness and the cost of greatness and how every album I'm like, "I'm going to be satisfied with this one. I'm going to be completely satisfied. I'm going to have no issues with it." And how it almost never happens. And then at the cost of greatness as well. I feel like it was like, well, maybe I got there, but at what cost as well, what cost to my sanity and to my life and to the other lives I could have had? And it was about the brutality of ambition and almost violence of greatness as well, the things that you put yourself through and that you put your loved ones through to get there. Every interaction or moment is fodder for the song. You miss all these family moments and it feels like this relentless thing of just forgetting how hard it is, forgetting how you're never satisfied and every time a tour and an album is over being like, "I'm going to do it again. And this one, this one will be the one. I will be happy. It'll be perfect." And when you are young and people aren't taking you seriously, you don't really think it's because you're a young woman, you just think it's you. You just think it's because you're annoying or you're too much or you're like... And it does really hurt early.
Florence Welch talks about connecting with new audiences and how writing 'Everybody Scream' has healed her
You can't help but just absorb the feeling that maybe you're not good enough or because you're not to some people's tastes, that there's something wrong or you need to change or whatever. You can't help absorb that when you're young. And I do think I've had some sort of revelation just through keeping on making work and seeing the people that come to my shows and now, honestly, having younger people find my work and find the biggest, craziest songs I've ever made and love them, like love them. So, I'm like, "Oh, my God, I was doing something that people loved." It feels like, I think more and more people discovering it has almost soothed so much of that early shame about how big I was and how expressive I was, so that's been really healing. And I think I'm realising that, "Oh, it's for them and for the people who it's not for, it's just not for them." And that's okay. And I don't have to please them. And I think I've said that every time I've made a record where I'm like, "I don't care about what people think," but I think this is the only album where I genuinely don't because of what it costs me. You know what I mean? I'm just like, "It costs me so much to make this album. The people who it's not for, that's okay." I know who it's for now and I think that has changed.
Florence Welch on having an ectopic miscarriage while on stage and about finishing her tour shortly after
Florence Welch: I do talk about the prescience of songwriting sometimes, but there was this line in ‘King' which was like, "I never knew my killer would be coming from within," and it was a song about motherhood. And I have spoken in the past about the sort of strange subconscious prescience of songwriting, but then I actually ended up having a ectopic miscarriage on stage that was dangerous, and that I had to be hospitalised for, and I had to have immediate surgery because I had a Coke can of blood in my abdomen. And I didn't want to go to the scan because I just wanted to keep touring, and I was like, "I've been through many physical things on stage, I can get through this." And they were like, "No, you're coming in to have a scan." And then I was immediately taken into surgery. And then I went back on stage 10 days later and was singing that song in this, like, I don't know how I did that. I think I was just in a total fog at that point.
Zane Lowe: Do you think you were just trying to cope? Was that what going back on stage was? Because obviously there would've been people around you that would've given you the grace required to process?
Florence Welch: I think I didn't want to end the tour. I had two shows left and I was like, that's why I was like... I like, I don't want to... Something has been taken from me that I didn't want to happen. I don't also want to end my whole tour on this, you know? And yeah, I just went back and played. It's also going back to the only place that I feel like I could really feel a sense of control and power again, you know? Ectopic pregnancies are really painful, and before I did the gig, when I didn't know that that's what was happening to me, I was in a lot of pain and yet I stepped onto the stage and I felt it all just went away. It all went away. All the pain went away and there was wind blowing and I was like, whatever is here, it's going to carry me through this moment. And I did. I felt, like, this presence has always been with me on stage, just... And it was outside, it was the sea, the wind was blowing. It was very gothic. It was like a white lace dress, but really all the pain just went away. And I just was there, and in the mud, in the rain and with these people and I didn't feel anything, you know? And then, so to kind of then go back to the stage just makes sense to me, you know? I want to go back to this place that I kind of... It's weird, isn't it? Because it's like you'd think something really terrible happening to you would make you not want to go back, but I'm like, no. It kind of left me more in awe of the power of performance and the power of songwriting than I ever have been before, if you know what I mean? Like, of how powerful it can be. So yeah, there wasn't really any doubt in my mind that I would go back and do those two shows. That's how I wanted to end the tour.
Florence Welch on connecting with audiences through music and trauma
The kind of gift in going through something awful is that you can embrace someone who's been through it too, you know? And I think it's almost like I had this feeling like I wanted to just put my arms around anyone who had experienced something like this, you know? And I think that is almost like what songwriting is to me is about making connection and being able to embrace someone even though you're not physically with them.
Florence Welch talks about exploring mysticism, witchcraft and the occult when writing 'Everybody Scream'
Florence Welch: I felt so out of control of my body. It was interesting. I looked into themes of witchcraft, and mysticism, and everywhere that you looked in terms of birth or stories of birth, you came across stories of witchcraft, and folk horror, and myths, and it just felt like it had-
Zane Lowe: Deeply misunderstood as well.
Florence Welch: Well, obviously some of the first women tried as witches were midwives. Some of the first women tried as witches were just because they owned property, just like usually they had something that people wanted. So they had property, or land, or do this. So they were like, "Uh-uh." But it was also a lot, women living a non-traditional-
Zane Lowe: As you rightfully said, it would be nice if men found power safely.
Florence Welch: Yes.
Zane Lowe: Right?
Florence Welch: "So you have way too many sheep, witch."
Zane Lowe: "Witch."
Florence Welch: "Witch." So I mean, I did end up just boiling kind of almost like cauldrons for myself full of herbs, and I needed natural ways to heal as well as the medical things. There's almost just a sense of trying to find a different... I don't know. Yeah, I think it was looking into forms of power, right?
Florence Welch on writing 'Perfume and Milk'
Florence Welch: I think it's interesting because that song was actually the furthest from the event that was like two years, I think, from, yeah, two years from when it happened. And so it was like, it was like it was like processing, it was about healing and having watched seasons change and having watched other things like, you know, growing and then returning to the earth and a sense that I was also part of that like nature and part of that cycle… That also it was a real song about like healing wasn't linear, you know? As I was trying to tie up the album, a lot of, like, almost like the feelings would suddenly randomly come back. I'd get randomly completely terrified again or I would get, like, or I would just suddenly be like, "It's happening again, it's happening again, it's happening." You know, I would get suddenly completely terrified. So it was sort of like looking as, like, "Healing is slow, it comes and it goes." And I was like, "Oh, it really, it is slow process and sometimes something would trip me up and I would feel like I was just like back in that terror. This record, I really just got so much like healing I think just from being in natural, in nature and obviously Aaron's studio is in Hudson Valley in upstate New York, which was surround... And I did. I stayed in a little house. It was very like the witch at the edge of the woods. I stayed in a little house on the edge of town and I like finished the record with Aaron and it was a sense that I was like... As I was having to kind of look at how I'd heal, look at the songs that I started the record with, look at how it was going to end and like, yeah, like piece myself together, you know? And I wanted to put in lots of natural flora and fauna on this record from we looked into a lot of folk songs as well, because there's that amazing period of '70s folk where they're all like into the occult, you know? Like Judy Sill and there's an amazing book called Electric Eden, which is like how, when like folk and mysticism all started crossing over. And so we were looking a lot of that at that period of time as well. And yeah, I was just, like, exploring all these different themes. But yeah, that song kind of came out of those kind of things.
Florence Welch talks about working with Mark Bowen and Aaron Dessner
Florence Welch: So this record started in South London. So I started it in South London and a lot of the early stuff and the demos was recorded in South London. Yeah, me and Bowen sort of started it in South London and then it was kind of starting to make it in fits and starts. As Bowen was on tour, I was on tour, he would go away, Mitski would come to the studio and so I was like, people kind of came by when they were in London, like Ethel [Cain] came and did backing vocals on 'One of the Greats’. So, like, Bowen would go off on tour and then I would kind of keep chipping away at the songs that we had and then it sort of, it just gets to that process with a record where you can no longer see the wood for the trees. You know, I think it was 'One of the Greats' that broke us. That song was written in one take, but it took three years to finish.
Zane Lowe: But you did it in one take?
Florence Welch: We did it. Me and Bowen did it in one take. It's the guitar and vocal together and the guitar and vocal are together. And it was the first time I'd ever sung the song. I didn't-
Zane Lowe: It's such a "F*** you" riff as well-
Florence Welch: Yeah, I think he like had a riff and he was like, "I've got this riff." So he just started playing the riff and then I started singing, and then the song just happened. And we always meant to rerecord it, but we didn’t. But it made it a nightmare to produce, like, an absolute nightmare because the time signatures are all over the place. It's, like, speeds up and then it slows down again and then it speeds up again and like it does time dumps. The tuning is wild. I think someone texted me like, "Oh my God, I love that key change." I was like, "None of that is intentional. None of that is intentional." But it's imperfection, like when we tried to put it in time, it lost something and we tried to put it in tune, it lost something, so we needed an absolute wizard to come on board and to help like take that song to the transcendent level it needed to go to without taking away any of its rawness. And I think Aaron was probably the only person that could have done that. Like he just kind of got it, I think. He was like, "No, there's not like replaying that needs to be done. It's tiny like... " And I think him and his engineer, Bella, spent literally, like, days just like micro-moving drums, like micro, it was tiny. But yeah, basically when I spoke to him about that track, I was like, "Oh, okay, like Aaron... " because it's quite a weird project, like it was so wild. Some of it was so out of tune and I was like, "But we need to keep all that.” Some of the sounds were technically incredibly ugly or brutal. And I was like, "No, it was like an ugly and brutal experience in parts. We need those sounds." But I do, I think it was a confusing record for some people, but Aaron completely understood it. He was like, "No, I get this." So yeah, I went out to his studio to finish it up, and it helped that me and Bowen were huge fans of The National, you know. So it all just kind of made sense. And yeah, I went out there and spent like a month with Aaron kind of finishing it up and tying it together. Because it was also, there was, I was also working with Danny Hall, so there was an electronic element, I'd worked with Mitski, but I was like, I, with Dance Fever, because of the pandemic, I hadn't been able to get in a room with like one producer and just finish a whole record together.
