Florence + The Machine has released her sixth studio album “Everybody Scream” – a deeply profound work about her ectopic pregnancy miscarriage resulting in a near-death experience. She delivers themes of grief, horror, womanhood, and power through raw writing about the human experience. She asserts her power through the one defining truth of her career in music – that Florence Welch is one of the greats. 

Welch told Zane Lowe in an Apple Music interview, “I was thinking about greatness and the cost of greatness and how with every album I’m like ‘I’m gonna be satisfied with this one, I’m gonna be completely satisfied and have no issues with it’, and how it almost like never happens.”

Welch notes that the bridge of the second track “One Of The Greats” is the most daring and argumentative she has ever been in her writing. Critics during Florence’s debut, and even now, were male-centered. The men in the industry have the ability to define “greatness” but Florence belittles the seriousness of male self-importance throughout. She essentially states that women artists are being measured against standards set by men, for men. The ending of the opening track’s bridge is the final confrontation of who gets to take the role of the man in the industry (somebody who can define greatness). 

She sings, “Now don’t get me wrong, I’m a fan, You’re my second favourite front-man.” This is about the glorification of men, essentially saying she sees herself in that glorified role too. But the difference is, she earned it. That is why any given male artist is her second favorite front-man. She is the definitive first. She herself is the definition of greatness itself. 

Sonically, Florence has always done the violent push and pull the best. There is a chorus of women throughout the record singing and screaming while being led by Florence’s voice as she confronts her desires in herself and demands more from the audience. As the listener, you hear the desperate call and the ancient answer in her writing, but you feel it through her voice and production. Once you understand this dynamic, it changes within the next line. It teaches you through experience how loud something can be in the quiet. 

The abandonment of this principle in this latest work is, in part, what makes it a defining masterpiece in not just Florence’s career, but the music industry as a whole. Throughout this entire work, both her delivery and writing is brutal. She has approached this sixth album with a newfound power. 

The visual imagery of this record follows the core themes of magic, madness, and medicine through experiences of grief, womanhood, and humanity. The themes explained through grief, womanhood, and humanity are accompanied by occult imagery. 

All throughout the record, explicit and subtle references to Christian fanaticism are made through tracks like “Sympathy Magic”, “Witch Dance”, and “The Old Religion”. In these tracks, Florence and the choir of women sing with a ritualistic repetition. The writing itself describes revelations through pagan and magical elements in the context of a past full of restriction and suffering. These revelations are largely how she depicts her grief being processed through confronting the suffering of the past. 

In an interview with Universal Florence notes, “Early in my career, I was consistently ridiculed and derided for the bigness of my expression. I was thrust into the spotlight but also told again and again I didn’t deserve it, or that because it wasn’t to their taste, it wasn’t good. So maybe this is a 15-year outpouring of frustration.”

Florence beautifully illustrates how something in her has opened up, and the world around her expands because of it. The beauty and genius of how Florence articulates this in the record makes her one of the greats.