Florence + the Machine has unveiled a new song, ‘One Of The Greats’, taken from Florence Welch’s forthcoming sixth album, Everybody Scream.
Florence notes:
I don’t really know how to explain myself with this one, it was sort of a long poem about the cost of greatness. Who gets to decide what that is? Why do I even want it? Why am I never satisfied?
I feel like I die a little bit every time I make a record, and kind of literally nearly died on the last tour. Yet I always dig myself up to try again, always trying to please that one person who doesn’t like it, or finally feel like I made something perfect and I can rest.
Early in my career, I was consistently ridiculed and derided for the bigness of my expression. I was thrust into the spotlight but also told again and again I didn’t deserve it, or that because it wasn’t to their taste it wasn’t good. So maybe this is a 15-year outpouring of frustration. But also, a lot of the lines I just left in because I thought they were funny.
Me and Bowen from IDLES wrote it in one take. He played the guitar and I just sang it straight from the page. We meant to re-record it but the first take just had this amazing energy.
Then Aaron Dessner helped us take it to a truly transcendent place. I wanted it to feel like you were disintegrating into nothing at the end. Which is sometimes what the creative process feels to me. Death and resurrection over and over.
The new album is set for release on October 31, preorder it here.
‘One Of The Greats’ follows the album’s title track, released last month with a video directed by Autumn de Wilde to rapturous praise. Florence wrote and produced Everybody Scream with a close-knit circle of collaborators including Mark Bowen of IDLES – who appears in the video for “Everybody Scream,” Aaron Dessner and Mitski.
After needing lifesaving surgery on the Dance Fever tour, Florence’s recovery took her down the path of spiritual mysticism, witchcraft and folk horror as she felt the limits of her body and explored what it means to be “healed.” The album treads through womanhood, partnership, aging and dying; exposing the murky in the mundane.
Across five albums—2009’s Lungs, 2011’s Ceremonials, 2015’s How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful, 2018’s High As Hope and 2022’s Dance Fever—Florence has become one of the most monumental artists of a generation, with multiple U.S. and U.K. #1 albums and countless awards. Known for her earth-shattering live show and singular, iconic voice, Florence has sold out shows and headlined festivals the entire world over. She has collaborated and shared stages with icons—The Rolling Stones, Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift among them—and published a book of lyrics, poetry and drawings, Useless Magic.
