Florence + The Machine, a band best known for their chart-topping songs like “The Dog Days Are Over,” “Shake It Out,” and their critically-acclaimed album, titled “Ceremonials,” has released their sixth studio album: “Everybody Scream.”
In 2008, Florence + The Machine released the song “The Dog Days Are Over” on their debut album, “Lungs.” The song hit the charts in 2010 and spent 20 weeks on Billboard Hot 100, leading to their imminent rise in the indie-rock scene. The band has been nominated for seven Grammys, won the 2023 Gold Derby Music Award’s title of Best Rock/Alternative Artist, and been nominated for several other prestigious awards.
The image most commonly associated with the band is their lead vocalist and primary songwriter, Florence Welch. With wind-swept ginger hair, Stevie Nicks-inspired fashion, and haunting vocals, Welch is the signature face of Florence + The Machine. You may have seen photos of her bounding across a stage — barefoot — in flowing bohemian garments.
Released on Halloween, the band’s newest album, “Everybody Scream,” features complex lyricism and stirring vocals. Using images from classic folklore, the album covers themes of love, grief, and letting go, all of which Welch has recently wrestled with.
“…I think for most musicians, it’s [music] a very personal experience, so everything that they experience personally goes into their art,” Miramonte music teacher Carl Oser said.
The primary inspiration for the album comes from Welch’s near-death experience in 2023. Shortly after the release of the band’s fifth album, “Dance Fever,” Welch discovered that she had been carrying an ectopic pregnancy, an unviable pregnancy requiring immediate medical attention due to its life-threatening nature. Welch, unaware of the dire circumstances of her pregnancy, still planned to headline a festival in Cornwall, England. Before the festival, Welch experienced heavy bleeding and pain. Despite this, she was still determined to perform. Welch took an ibuprofen and hit the stage. It was only after the performance, and after heavy encouragement from her doctor, that Welch went to the hospital and found out she was carrying an ectopic pregnancy and had a “coke can’s worth of blood” in her abdomen. Luckily, Welch received an emergency surgery, recovered, and began touring again only 10 days later.
“The closest I came to making life was the closest I came to death,” Welch said in an interview with The Guardian.
Welch’s trauma served as one of the primary inspirations for the album, with songs like “Sympathy Magic” and “Perfume and Milk” not only narrating her grief and healing from the trauma of her pregnancy, but also extending a hand to others who may be experiencing their own grief or trauma.
Shortly after her ectopic pregnancy, Welch began to more deeply explore witchcraft and folklore. While these themes also play a role in the band’s earlier works, Welch fully leans into the witchy nature of this album, seen in the songs “Witch Dance” and “Kraken.”
However, it’s no surprise that Welch is leaning into the supernatural with “Everybody Scream.”
From a young age, Welch occupied herself by reading classic Greek mythology stories such as Homer’s “The Odyssey” and “The Iliad.” In middle school, Welch even started a witch coven with her friends, casting spells upon their classmates.
The first song of the album and its namesake, “Everybody Scream,” opens with a musical iridescence that quickly transitions into an unrestrained howl, building up to the chorus, where Welch commands her listeners to scream and dance.
“Everybody dance / Everybody sing / Everybody move / Everybody scream,” Welch sings.
Welch’s cry for her listeners to scream and dance represents her fearless embrace of disorder and her own free agency. She encourages listeners to do the same.
In the next and longest song of the album, “One of the Greats,” Welch addresses the double standard for female musicians in a historically male-dominated industry. “It must be nice to be a man and make boring music just because you can,” Welch sings. In the accompanying music video, Welch sits in the back of a car, coldly looking out the window and smoking a cigarette (which, off-camera, was revealed to be a licorice stick).
In “Music by Men,” Welch draws her lyrics from another of her own on-stage experiences.
“Breaking my bones, getting four out of five,” Welch sings.
This line references her experience when, during a show, she broke her foot, “bled all over the stage,” yet continued her performance, reacting with dismay when the show was rated 4 out of 5 stars.
“I was like, ‘What more do I have to do?’” Welch jokingly exclaimed in an interview with Rolling Stone Magazine.
In “You Can Have It All,” the second-to-last song on the album, Welch challenges the notion of female artists being able to “have it all,” something Welch has personally struggled with.
“In music, there is no parental leave, no support. When you have a child, you have to take yourself out of the profession. The ‘you can have it all’ is a performance myth that burns us out. The song is my angry answer to that,” Welch says in an interview with Süddeutsche Zeitung, a German newspaper.
The record’s last song, “And Love,” is a somber ballad of discovery narrating Welch’s re-examination of the concept of peace and what it means to her.
“And love was not what I thought it was / More like an animal crawling deep into a cave / Than a romance novel heroine being swept away.”
The song ends with the repetition of the phrase, “Peace is coming,” mirroring Welch’s slow reconciliation with the notion of peace, punctuated by a dream-like harp.
“Everybody Scream” serves as a powerful record of Welch’s resilience through trauma, and this album allows you to take the journey with her.
