On stage, Florence Welch projects a kind of mystical power. Her voice is otherworldly, and her imagery evokes a bygone time when magic was real. Her sixth studio album as Florence + the Machine, Everybody Scream, builds on that mysticism in deeper, intensely personal ways.
Before writing the record, Welch experienced a miscarriage that required emergency surgery. In this session, recorded live at Electric Lady Studios in New York City, she discusses how she tapped into a primal feminine energy to work through that physical and emotional trauma. She talks about her time exploring London's Warburg Institute, where she learned more about the history of witchcraft and magic.
"I think the imagination is this form of escape; mythology is a form of escape," she says. "I was looking to find meaning in the experiences that I had had. I was looking to explore forms of power and also to look for other women who'd kind of lived a nontraditional life."
On Everybody Scream, Welch also explores her relationship with performance and the push and pull between the performing self and the "normal" self. She wrote the title track with another high-profile musician, Mitski.
"She really helped construct that song into what it was," Welch says. "We had this conversation about the level of sacrifices sometimes feels like, as a woman, that you have to do to keep going in this job that potentially that your male counterparts don't have to deal with. But within that, she said something really beautiful: She was, like, the intimacy that it brings you is also a kind of experience that maybe they will never know."
She performs live, as well, including a fan favorite from her debut album, Lungs.
This episode of World Cafe was produced and edited by Miguel Perez. Our senior producer is Kimberly Junod and our engineer is Chris Williams. Our programming and booking coordinator is Chelsea Johnson and our line producer is Will Loftus.
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