Festival
10 Best Florence + the Machine Songs
Florence + the Machine earned five 2016 Grammy Award noms. Here's a look at their best songs.
Florence + The Machine
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Updated Dec. 14, 2015: When you consider Florence + the Machine's contemporaries, it seems weird that the English band was such a huge pop-music force in 2015. Skrillex’s barn-burning EDM, Beyoncé's unwaveringly cool confidence, Lorde's sci-fi chilliness, the apoplectic dudeness of Mumford & Sons, Taylor Swift's Taylor Swiftness. How exactly does Florence + the Machine fit in?
Here's a woman named Florence writing gigantic, fearless songs about love filtered through dusty old tomes and pastoral nursery rhymes that have more in common with the Decembrists and Arcade Fire than today's pop music. Somehow, her vision has proved wildly popular, earning the band top headlining dates, Grammy noms and spots on big film soundtracks, like "Snow White and the Huntsman," "The Great Gatsby" and "The Twilight Saga: Eclipse."
Florence + the Machine’s third album, “How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful,” came out last May, and the band took it on the road, stopping at festivals like Coachella, Bonnaroo and Governors Ball. It has since been nominated for five 2016 Grammy Awards. And Florence + the Machine have already been announced as the headliners of Firefly and Hangout in 2016 — there are sure to be more festival dates on the horizon.
In celebration of all things Florence + the Machine, we decided to take a look back at the band’s still-burgeoning career and name their 10 best songs so far. Please let us know if we snubbed anything.
10. “Spectrum (Calvin Harris Remix)” (2011)
Florence Welch plays in one of the biggest folk bands in pop music history, but she’s also an unabashed fan of dance music. That’s hardly surprising given her ear for hooks, but she’s talked extensively about growing up leaving everything on the floor at London raves. So it’s no surprise she enlisted megaproducer Calvin Harris to turn “Spectrum,” a standout from 2011 LP "Ceremonials," into a warm, optimistic, decidedly ‘90s warehouse anthem. What if Florence + the Machine went full-on EDM?
9. “Delilah” (2015)
Welch is a big fan of banking her emotions in pastoral metaphors and literary references, but on “Delilah” she opts to opine in 21st century language. For instance, this is one of the few Florence + the Machine songs where you can wait on a “call,” not etched parchment or something equally magical. This is another breakup song from the very, very scorned "How Big, How Beautiful, How Blue," and as such it features desperate, ugly refrains like “cause I’m gonna be free and I’m gonna be fine, but maybe not tonight.” We’ve all been there, and, wow, does that solidarity feel good.
8. “What Kind of Man” (2015)
The lead single from “How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful" is perhaps the most straightforward rock song Florence has ever written. Yeah, there’s some warbly Fever Ray-ish modulations going on in the beginning, but once that jagged guitar hits it doesn’t let up for the next three minutes. You’ve got big marching-band brass, handclaps and Florence’s own Patti Smith tic.
7. “Ship To Wreck” (2015)
Much of "How Big, How Beautiful, How Blue" has to do with a breakup that rocked Florence’s personal life. But, as you might expect, she’s not exactly the sort of songwriter to deal in the quiet Nick Drake way. No, she studies the religion of Stevie Nicks and PJ Harvey, so the record’s preeminent post-love exaltation deals with great white sharks and killer whales tearing apart her body while she dreams. A heavy-handed metaphor? Yeah, but it hits the soul hard and sometimes that’s just what the doctor ordered.
6. “Cosmic Love” (2009)
Never doubt Welch’s Midsummer’s Night Dream tendencies. “Cosmic Love” might be a hilarious, overwrought title, but the Machine is at its best when it’s cranking at full playhouse capacity. It stands as the sixth(!) single released from their landmark debut album, and it’s always glittered with a little less intensity than, say, “Dog Days Are Over” or “Rabbit Heart.” That’s good! Yeah it still features a harp, but occasionally you prefer some mid-tempo spookiness to an all-out elegy.
5. “You’ve Got The Love” (2009)
A couple songs down we'll see Florence’s ability to stratify her voice across multiple channels, making her sound like a bellowing Celtic goddess. But her greatest vocal performance came on “You’ve Got the Love,” a cover of a Candi Staton song from 1986 that became a rave staple in the early 1990s after a remix from The Source. Florence filtered it through her wood-nymph pomp as the closing track of “Lungs,” and turned it into one of the greatest stadium-folk jams ever. Florence eschews the sequencers and studio tricks, and just sings, for her band, in a room. A total mic-drop moment after all the manicured ones that came before it.
4. “Rabbit Heart (Raise it Up)” (2009)
It’s crazy that this song is already six years old, right? The Machine’s breakout single wasn’t its first, but it works like a formal introduction to Florence’s universe. You’ve got her trademark, infinitely-overdubbed voice that turns her already formidable voice into a ball of compacted choral momentum. She’s writing about a weird, twisted fairy tale that’s equal parts “Alice in Wonderland” and “The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe,” perfect for your average anglophilic high-schooler. And then there’s that hook, which is best captured using all caps: “THIS IS A GIFT, IT COMES WITH A PRICE, WHO IS THE LAMB AND WHO IS THE KNIFE?” In 2009, when indie rock was choking on reverb and pepperoni pizza, Florence arrived ready for stardom. Here she is.
3. “Dog Days Are Over” (2008)
It’s hard to know what else there is to say about “Dog Days Are Over.” It’s probably Florence + the Machine’s most famous song ever, (originally released all the way back in 2008!) and it still stands as the definitive ukulele banger of the 21st century. In traditional Welch-ian technique she’s effete on the verses and a cannonball on the chorus. “Leave all your loving and longing behind/ you can’t carry it with you if you want to survive,” straight through the heart, as always.
2. “Never Let Me Go” (2011)
Florence has a way of bringing texture to her music. Take the opening piano chords on deeper “Ceremonials’” cut “Never Let Me Go.” Drenched in an echo, dulled at the top with a nice rumble to its bass. A few moments later Florence’s reprise drifts over the mountains, like its written in the clouds. She’ll bring it back, louder and stouter when she does, but it's that delicate table-setting that makes The Machine great. The best moment comes right after the teased ending at the three-minute mark, where all that gorgeous sound comes rushing back at once. It’s ephemeral, it slips through your fingers, and it reminds us that we should never be too cool for sublimity. “Never Let Me Go” was released as a single, but it didn’t do much on the charts. It’s a shame because it captures her at the height of her talents. Florence the technician, Florence the dramatist, Florence the icon.
1. “Shake it Out” (2011)
This is your current belt-holder. When I first saw Florence + the Machine, at a daytime (!) set under a Coachella tent in April of 2010, I hoped she’d someday write a song like this. A rotund, deliberate, theater-kid fantasy with demons, and buried horses and a chorus so ridiculously huge it lifts up everyone from 8th grade dilettantes to the icy soul of too cool haters. Maybe we don’t express our self-hatred with lines like “And I am done with my graceless heart, so tonight I'm gonna cut it out and then restart,” but that’s why we listen to people like Florence. It would become her first crossover hit, touching the number one spot on Billboard’s Adult Alternative chart and earning a Grammy nomination in the Best Pop Duo/Group Performance category. Every generation needs their “I Will Survive.” This is ours.