\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div> \t\t\t\t\tFlorence Welch<\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tThea Traff for Rolling Stone<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n\tThe story of this album starts with your last tour, for 2022\u2019s Dance Fever.<\/em> Can you tell me about going into that tour and how you left as a different person after it?<\/strong> \n\tEverybody Scream<\/em> came out of wanting to go deeper into magic and mysticism. Like, \u201cOK, shit is coming true. I really need to figure out what\u2019s fucking going on here.\u201d It opened up a portal to another place. It was a place of real exploration, and it opened up all these different tendrils of myself going through something like that.\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n \n\tHave you ever had an album or song prophesize what came after?\u00a0<\/strong> \n\t<\/p>\n \u201cTHE ONLY PLACE I REALLY FEEL LIKE MYSELF IS MAKING SONGS.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p><\/blockquote>\n \n\tWhat brought you to study more magic and mysticism?\u00a0<\/strong> \n\tEverywhere you look in terms of stories of birth and life and death, I found stories of witchcraft. You couldn\u2019t look into anything about it and not find these folktales or find stories of witches or magic because it is so unknown. No one could tell me why this happened to me. They [told me] \u201cjust bad luck.\u201d When no one can tell you why, you\u2019re looking to find meaning. You\u2019re looking to find a way to understand it, and also some kind of control.\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n \n\tYou experienced pregnancy loss onstage, while performing in front of thousands of people. How did you navigate that as a performer?<\/strong> \n\tDid you start working on or writing the album shortly after, or did it take some time to process?<\/strong> \n\tI had some trauma therapy afterwards. She was great. Obviously, it was a specialist for people who have gone through things that I went through. And she [said] there can be a need to really fix it immediately and to fix it by trying to have a kid again really quickly. She was like, \u201cThe only bit of advice I really can give you is don\u2019t try again until you feel like yourself again.\u201d The only [place] I really feel like myself is making songs, so that\u2019s how I process things that happened.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tI don\u2019t remember the first six months of making this record, really. Songs like \u201cWitch Dance\u201d and \u201cYou Can Have It All,\u201d the first really raw ones that were written pretty immediately afterwards, I don\u2019t really remember. What was amazing about doing them with Bowen was he has so much discordance and this punk element to it with the brutality of some of his sounds. I needed that. It was brutal. What happened to me was a discordant event in my life. So it was sort of amazing that we\u2019d already started working together. He was the perfect person to be writing songs like that in the aftermath of it.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \n\tThere\u2019s a great sense of humor on this album. On \u201cMusic by Men,\u201d you sing: \u201cBreaking my bones\/Getting four out of five\/Listening to a song by the 1975\/I thought, \u2018Fuck it, I might as well give music by men a try.\u2019\u2009\u201d Which song by the 1975 were you listening to at the time?<\/strong> \n\t\u201cLove It If We Made It\u201d?<\/strong> \n\tWhen I broke my foot onstage, I got four out of five stars for that show. I was like, \u201cWhat more do \n\tOn \u201cOne of the Greats,\u201d you sing, \u201cI\u2019ll be up there with the man and the 10 other women and the 100 greatest records of all time\/It must be nice to be a man and make boring music just because you can.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tA lot of the lines in there, I just found them really funny. It was this feeling of \u201cWhen is it going to be good enough?\u201d I give so much and sometimes I wonder if in that giving and in not having that almost masculine cool of holding stuff back, being obtuse, not saying it all like, \u201cWhat is he saying? That\u2019s \n\tBut then sometimes when I listen to things that have that level of masculine reserve, I\u2019m just like, \u201cIsn\u2019t this kind of boring though? What are they saying?\u201d Maybe it would be an easier life to be able to hold things back, to be able to just be hot in a T-shirt and everyone be like, \u201cWow, it\u2019s revolutionary.\u201d I\u2019m jealous. If you\u2019re insulting someone, it comes from envy, honestly.<\/p>\n \n\t<\/p>\n \u201cI NEVER WANTED TO BE MORE FAMOUS THAN THIS. THIS IS AS MUCH AS I CAN HANDLE.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p><\/blockquote>\n \n\tWas it that same concert review or a different moment that spurred you to consider the limitations of how women are perceived in the industry?<\/strong> \n\tIf I\u2019m being honest, I didn\u2019t even really align with my gender, and I still don\u2019t know what it fucking means to be a woman. I don\u2019t know what that feels like. I don\u2019t ascribe anything to it particularly\u2026. So it meant that I didn\u2019t really feel any barriers to me really because of it. You don\u2019t realize until you get older, that people aren\u2019t taking you seriously because you\u2019re a young woman. I just thought it was because I was annoying. It\u2019s only when you look back and see the same treatment happening over and over again to young women. You\u2019re like, \u201cWait, I think maybe that wasn\u2019t about me.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tAnd that does come with wisdom, but that also comes with fury.\u00a0 I think this record really wrestles with the extra sacrifices to commit to this life and to commit to the stage. I was speaking to Mitski about that, and she was like, \u201cYes, but the intimacy that that also brings you with performance, the intimacy that that brings you with work, is so extraordinary.\u201d I feel that too.<\/p>\n \n\tHave you felt underappreciated or underrated as an artist?<\/strong> \n\tEventually, through all the work, I got the career I always wanted. There was this moment where I think there would\u2019ve been huge intentions for me to go very mainstream. On Lungs,<\/em> there was \n\tAnd when you step outside of all the trappings of being a rock star on stage and putting out an album, what does your life look like?<\/strong> \n\tThere\u2019s a lot of pacing and reading and watching television. You\u2019re on tour and you\u2019re like, \u201cI just need to get home.\u201d And then I get home, I\u2019m like, \u201cThere is a beast inside me that needs to come out. I\u2019m not meant for this life. I am too big for this house.\u201d The other bits of fame, I\u2019m not really that interested in. I just find them stressful.<\/p>\n \n\tLike what? \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tFlorence Welch in New York, NY on Oct. 24, 2025. <\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tThea Traff for Rolling Stone<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n\tOne of the first people that you called for this album was James Ford, who also worked on your breakthrough hit \u201cDog Days Are Over<\/a>.\u201d What do you recall of making a song that would end up changing your life? \n\tThe first thing he did was he sped it up. It was a couple of BPMs slower. When I needed a lead single for this album, the demo that I had [for \u201cEverybody Scream\u201d] was really wild and quite a confusing song and he just completely understood it. But the first thing he did was sped it up. I was like, \u201cOkay, I trust you. That went well the last time.\u201d<\/p>\n
I guess in a way Dance Fever<\/em> was a record of prophecy and this record is a record of catastrophe. [Dance Fever<\/em>] dealt with performance as well, and the fact that all the performance had been taken away. There was a period when musicians really didn\u2019t know if live music would come back, and it was a record questioning whether I wanted to keep doing it or whether I would want to start a family. And then on that tour, I had a life-and-death experience that then led me into making this record.<\/p>\n\n
It was never this literal. I wrote a song [for Dance Fever<\/em>] called \u201cKing,\u201d which was wrestling with whether I wanted to be a mother. There was a line in it that was like, \u201cI never knew my killer would be coming from within.\u201d The thing that nearly killed me was a complication with a pregnancy loss onstage. It was never that on the nose.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When something happens in the body, you feel so powerless. I think I was looking for forms of power and felt very primal. It was very sudden, very violent, [and] absolutely saved my life. When you have to have emergency surgery, the lights are so bright; it\u2019s so clinical. There was a sense afterwards that I needed to be near to the earth. I needed to be near natural things.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n
I was in pain. And what do you do as a woman? I just took some ibuprofen [and] went to work. I was in a place that I understood. I was in a place of bodily power and control, and I was experiencing a loss. I didn\u2019t know it was a dangerous loss, but I was like, \u201cI\u2019m going to get through this, and if I can get through this show, at least I haven\u2019t lost another thing.\u201d When I stepped out on that stage, all the pain just went away, and I was free. It was weirdly an incredible show because I didn\u2019t know that I was dying in some way. I didn\u2019t know I had internal bleeding by then. But I felt this kind of presence that\u2019s always been with me onstage take over, and it carried me through the whole thing. It was like love or something. I was in the mud and in a hurricane, and weirdly, it was really beautiful. Does that sound fucked up to say?\u00a0<\/p>\n
I\u2019d started making the album already. The first person I worked with was Mark Bowen of the band Idles. When we both had time off from tours, we would get together and start sketching things out. \u201cOne of the Greats\u201d had already started to emerge, and then I think we wrote \u201cEverybody Scream.\u201d But, yes, I went straight from the tour to the studio. After everything that happened, there was this need to process it.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Traff_Florence-Welch_Final-10-copy.jpg?w=819\")
<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>
[Singing<\/em>] \u201cWe\u2019re fucking in a car\/Shooting heroin\/Saying controversial things\u2009\u2009\u2026\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Yes! I was like, \u201cThis song is really good.\u201d A big thing with songwriting is it\u2019s often because it rhymes. So you needed a band that rhymed with \u201cfive.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
I have to do?\u201d I literally bled all over the stage. People were mopping it up and I finished the fucking show, and I think across the board it was like, \u201cFour out of five.\u201d Fuck\u2019s sake. What now?<\/p>\n
so cool. What do those lyrics mean?\u201d\u2009\u2026\u2009I was like, \u201cIf I keep giving this much, does that mean people aren\u2019t taking me seriously?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
You get all the lists, and there\u2019s a sense that they have the amount of women they can fill and they\u2019re like, \u201cOK, we\u2019ve ticked that box.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not a sense of being underrated. It\u2019s just sometimes you\u2019re looking at the wrong people to validate you.\u00a0 There\u2019s all these people over here who love it and get it, and there\u2019s just one dude who\u2019s like, \u201cYeah, I\u2019m not into it.\u201d\u00a0 That is something that you grow out of, which is really nice.\u00a0 Also the way that I am appreciated is the only way I would have it. I never wanted to be any more famous than this. This is actually about as much as I can handle.<\/p>\n
a moment where I could have chosen a different path. I don\u2019t have the kind of brain that can handle that amount of attention. I kept making choices that took me away from the spotlight and always back to the work, or that took my personality out of it and always back to the music.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s really boring. That\u2019s the thing, isn\u2019t it? Be calm in your life so you can be wild in your work. I think that was really true for me. The calmer my life got, the wilder I could be in my performance styles and in my videos and in my artwork. A lot of self-loathing and shame and everything, I was drinking or taking drugs to figure out. Once I got sober and my life became a lot quieter, I actually found that freedom from shame means that you can explore so many more different things in your work. I really found that to be amazing.<\/p>\n
<\/strong>There\u2019s a line in \u201cSympathy Magic\u201d about \u201cthe vague humiliations of fame.\u201d That\u2019s what I basically have found fame being like, just a series of small humiliations. The celebrity side of it has never really appealed. Because I\u2019m shy or anxious and I need a lot of time to daydream, I need a lot of time out of the spotlight. I don\u2019t actually like a lot of attention. I don\u2019t like a lot of attention in general when it\u2019s not about my work. I think I like to lead a very private and quiet life off stage basically.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Traff_Florence-Welch_Final-05-copy.jpg?w=819\")
<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>
<\/strong>I still have the CD with the original \u201cDog Days\u201d demo on it. We were rehearsing at this studio called Premises Rehearsal Studios, which is still there in East London. [James] had his studio above Premises, and I went and knocked on his door. He says I came in and started banging on the table and singing it at him. The label that I\u2019d been working with did not understand this demo whatsoever. They were just like, \u201cNo. Where\u2019s another \u2018Kiss With A Fist?\u2019 That was fun, cute, catchy guitars.\u201d And James just understood it.<\/p>\n