“This one’s just a horror film.” That’s how Florence Welch describes her latest album, Everybody Scream. The title track begins with an eerie organ and Welch’s layered vocals. An ominous choir revealing a nightmare, or worse, a dark reality.
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Theatricality is nothing new to Florence And The Machine. But Welch took things further, taking screaming lessons and studying occultism while writing the album. Now that she’s learned how to scream, Welch implores her audience to do the same.
About “Everybody Scream”
On “Everybody Scream”, Welch tracks the toll of her work, fame, and ambition. The opening verse references her public persona, known only by her first name, accompanying The Machine. She’s singing about this person, as if Florence is detached from Welch.
Get on stage, and I call her by her first name
Try to stay away, but I always meet her back at this place.
She gives me everything, I feel no pain
I break down, get up, and do it all again
Because it’s never enough, and she makes me feel loved
I can come here and scream as loud as I want.
The price of a dream, art, and drive leaves her ragged and bloody on the stage. However steep the cost, it’s difficult to ignore public admiration.
Here, I don’t have to be quiet
Here, I don’t have to be kind
Extraordinary, normal, all at the same time
But look at me run myself ragged, blood on the stage
But how can I leave you when you’re screaming my name?
Screaming my name.
Becoming Full Size
Welch co-wrote the song with Mark Bowen of Idles and indie singer-songwriter Mitski. Bringing together the musical worlds of folk, indie rock, and chamber pop.
Much of Florence And The Machine’s work is steeped in folklore. You can spot it in the music video, directed by Autumn de Wilde, where Welch performs for old men in a 16th-century manor house. Wearing a red dress, amid dueling metaphors of blood and lust, she dances over a man and spits flowers in his face.
The rest of the patrons become possessed as Welch leads a ritual of jinx and sorcery. The camp scene is exactly what you want from an artist who declares she’s “becoming my full size.” And with a voice powerful enough to traverse old-world mysticism, folk, and modern pop.
Ultimately, “Everybody Scream” examines Welch’s relationship to her fans, but also to the stage itself. Only by removing herself from her reality can she fully grasp both the pain and addiction of being a performer.
There’s a kind of possession that happens with performance art. But in a real-life horror story, what happens when the motivating spirit replaces the person it inhabits?
Here, I can take up the whole of the sky
Unfurling, becoming my full size
Look at me burst through the ceiling
Aren’t you so glad you came?
Breathless and begging and screaming my name
Screaming my name.
Photo by Jim Dyson/Getty Images
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