Presenter: Over five studio albums, the band Florence and The Machine have explored genres from pop to punk to soul and their most recent record Dance Fever just came out.
I Need My Golden Crown Of Sorrow
My Bloody Sword To Swing
My Empty Halls To Echo
With Grand Self-Mythology
I Am No Mother
I Am No Bride, I Am King
I Am No Mother
I Am No Bride, I Am King
Their music can be both introspective and theatrical, poetic and confessional. At the center of it all is Florence Welch, the singer and main songwriter. My colleague, John Seabrook says this, "Heartbreak and loneliness rarely feel as delightful and is inviting as in an of Florence Welch song." Seabrook spoke with Florence Welch at the New Yorker Festival in 2019. She decided to go on a hiatus from performing after years of touring, but she sat down with John and played an acoustic set with Florence and The machine.
Florence Welch: Thank you so much for having me.
John Seabrook: Let's jump back to the beginning of your career, which we were talking about a decade here. It's really not a great deal of time, but you've packed a lot into that decade and you hit the ground running. I thought we would go through your life by talking about a few songs, your professional life. We're going to start with Dog Days Are Over.
The dog days are over
The dog days are done
The horses are coming
So you better run
Run fast for your mother, run fast for your father
Run for your children, run for your sisters and brothers
Leave all your love and your longing behind
I feel like this was a song where you maybe first discovered your sound or, at least for me, it was when I first heard your sound and maybe for a lot of us. I wondered if you could talk a little generally about where this song came from and how it fit into what work you were doing at the time.
Florence Welch: I had been writing some songs, but because everything was on guitar and I didn't know how to play guitar, I just assumed I would be the singer in someone else's band or I'd be a front woman. I think there was a kind of internalized self-doubt as well. I didn't know, I'm not a trained musician. I didn't have the attention span to sit and learn the piano or the focus. I was good at singing and I was like, "I'm already good at this thing," so I would write the, they were little gothic fairy tales. It's so much like guilt and drama involved. I don’t know why-
John Seabrook: Like starting a journal, sort of journaling and then moving into songs?
Florence Welch: I think I was already trying to process, I just think from an early age, I felt so much shame and I don't really know why. I don't know where that came from. I think those songs were always a way of trying to process what I felt was wrong about me. I always felt so ever sensitive as a kid. I felt other people had like a ticket to kind of get through life that I didn't know and how did you get that thing? Everyone seems to have a map and I don't.
I think these songs were a way of trying to express through these little metaphors, how I felt and beautify the things that had happened to me or that I'd done in a way to own them. The first song that I actually wrote, which you can tell because it's just an ascending scale was Between Two Lungs.
John Seabrook: Oh yes.
Florence Welch: That was the first thing that felt like it really came truly from me. I was so excited by that. Then the next song that we wrote was Dog Days. That was the first two. I remember how they're not the most complicated chords, but because I'd fucking never played anything. I thought they were amazing. I was just like, "I'm making this sound, can you hear this?" It's like, "Yes, it's fucking the piano. It makes that sound for everybody," but because I was the one getting to put them in order and stuff, I just saw this sounds incredible.
We didn't really have any equipment. We stole a drum from someone. We used pens and stuff. The feel of that song came from just a lot of enthusiasm, but not really any skill or equipment. That's how it came about. Okay. You ready?
Male Speaker 4: He's ready.
Female Speaker 5: He's ready.
Florence Welch: We're ready.
Happiness hit her like a train on a track
Coming towards her stuck still no turning back
She hid around corners and she hid under beds
She killed it with kisses and from it she fled
With every bubble she sank with her drink
And washed it away down the kitchen sink
The dog days are over
The dog days are done
The horses are coming
So you better run
Run fast for your mother, run fast for your father
Run for your children, for your sisters and brothers
Leave all your love and your longing behind
You can't carry it with you if you want to survive
The dog days are over
The dog days are done
Can you hear the horses?
'Cause here they come
And I never wanted anything from you
Except everything you had and what was left after that too, oh
Happiness hit her like a bullet in the back
Struck from a great height by someone who should know better than that
The dog days are over
The dog days are done
Can you hear the horses?
'Cause here they come
Run fast for your mother, run fast for your father
Run for your children, for your sisters and brothers
Leave all your love and your longing behind
You can't carry it with you if you want to survive
The dog days are over
The dog days are done
Can you hear the horses?
'Cause here they come
here they come
here they come
here they come
here they come
[applause]
John Seabrook: You were on a bit of a hiatus at the present from touring. Can we talk about how that happened? Where that came from?
Florence Welch: I've been touring since I was 21. I think I'm a person who works in extremes, so I just didn't stop. I don't know how to relax. I think that's probably clear, but Lungs and Ceremonials was just one, I don't know how long that was, like five years of touring and I'm not a natural traveler. I'm not-
John Seabrook: You don't flying, I think, right?
Florence Welch: Oh my God, I'm so scared of flying.
John Seabrook: Which is tough for an artist too, with an international--
Florence Welch: It's the worst and I had hypnotism on it and it wore off. Nobody told me that hypnotism wears off or I just think my anxiety is so powerful, that it destroyed the hypnotism. It defeated it. Then I had a break and also a breakdown, which is what happens when you don't stop touring for five years. When the touring stopped, all the structures that I'd been using-- with touring, you are very taken care of, so you could be quite a high functioning fuck up.
John Seabrook: Right.
Florence Welch: Which is what I was, very high functioning, but so self-destructive and such lack of any will to take care of myself.
John Seabrook: That gets me into the next subject here, is drinking which we both have in common. After the success of Lungs, you were thrown into the world of success and fashion. When you read your interviews from that time, in the interviews, you're falling apart. It's not surprising that with this life came drinking, but it got to a point where it was unmanageable or beyond.
Florence Welch: Yes and I had an insane endurance, but also people would come up to me who I thought were the craziest drinkers and drug takers I'd ever met and be like, "Whoa, you go harder than anyone I've ever met." I was like, "Oh my God," but yes, I think it was hard. I'd grown up in South London and that whole scene is punk on a pirate ship, it's pirate folk and it's everyone fend for themselves. The whole gig is an extended drinking game, where you just have to play in the middle.
That's what I understood is that that was rock and roll and if you couldn't go the hardest, you were letting rock and roll down. You were letting these legendary people down, but I think really why I would stay out for so long was, you know that sense of shame I spoke about in the beginning?
John Seabrook: Yes.
Florence Welch: That was there before any of the drinking and the drugs, I already had that. It would give me an escape from that, but then the things I did or the things I would say or the way I would treat people, it just confirmed the way that I'd felt as a kid. It was just like, "You are bad. There is something wrong with you." Then I would carry on trying to escape it in that way, but it would just keep getting worse.
If you've been doing that in whatever way, since you were 14, by the time you get to 27, you're just-- I just didn't want to feel that way anymore and it was so repetitive and at some point, the fun bit had gone. As much as I tried to get it back, I just couldn't. I think that's it, when the fun goes, it does not come back.
The first year that I stopped, I felt like I'd really lost a big part of who I was and how I understood myself. Also, I felt like I was letting down rock and roll history because I couldn't cope. I had to rebuild from scratch a little bit. The thing is that now, I don't know, I feel like it's almost the idea of rock and roll that we had, we've seen it so many times and it doesn't end well and I didn't want to be part of that story. Then I went back on tour for How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful after my break/breakdown.
That was the first tour that I'd done sober and it was amazing. It really feels much more rock and roll than anything I ever did when I was drinking is doing shows and connecting with people. That, to me, especially with everything going on in the world to be conscious and to be present and to really feel what's going on, even though it's painful, it feels much more a truly reborn spirit of rock and roll. It feels like that's what it should be about right now.
John Seabrook: That's beautiful.
[applause]
Between a crucifix and the Hollywood sign, we decided to get hurt
Now there's a few things we have to burn
Set our hearts ablaze, and every city was a gift
And every skyline was like a kiss upon the lips
And I was making you a wish
In every skyline
How big, how blue, how beautiful
How big, how blue, how beautiful
And meanwhile a man was falling from space
And every day I wore your face
Like an atmosphere around me
The satellite beside me
And meanwhile a man was falling from space
As he hit the Earth I left this place
Let the atmosphere surround me
The satellite beside me
What are we gonna do?
We've opened the door, now it's all coming through
Tell me you see it too
We opened our eyes and it's changing the view
Oh, what are we gonna do?
We opened the door now, it's all coming through
How big, how blue, how beautiful
How big, how blue, how beautiful
And every city was a gift
And every skyline was like a kiss upon the lips
And I was making you a wish
In every skyline
And meanwhile a man was falling from space
And every day I wore your face
Like an atmosphere around me
I'm happy you're beside me
What are we gonna do?
We've opened the door, now it's all coming through
Tell me you see it too
We've opened our eyes and it's changing the view
Oh, what are we gonna do?
We've opened the door now, it's all coming through
How big, how blue, how beautiful
How big, how blue, how beautiful
So much time on the other side
Waiting for you to wake up
So much time on the other side
Waiting for you to wake up
Maybe I'll see you in another life
If this one wasn't enough
So much time on the other side
Presenter: That's Florence Welch performing with Rob Ackroyd on guitar and Tom Monger on Heart. They played How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful, and before that, Dog Days are Over. The new album by Florence and The Machine is called Dance Fever. Florence spoke with John Seabrook, a long time staff writer of the New Yorker in 2019.

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