Florence + The Machine have released “One of the Greats” from their new album, Everybody Scream. That’s not subjective — that’s the actual name of the song.
Florence Welch explains in a statement that the song is “sort of a long poem about the cost of greatness: Who gets to decide what that is? Why do I even want it?”
In the song, Welch sings about literally coming back from the dead to “show you what it takes/ To become one of the greats.” She also describes her ambivalence about fame, singing, “Got everything I thought I wanted and cried hungover in a hotel closet.”
Welch says in the statement, “I feel like I die a little bit every time I make a record. … Yet I always dig myself up to try again, always trying to please that one person who doesn’t like it, or finally feel like I made something perfect and I can rest.”
She 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. But also, a lot of the lines I just left in because I thought they were funny.”
Among those funny lines: “It must be nice to be a man and make boring music just because you can.”
Welch co-wrote the song with Mark Bowen of fellow U.K. rockers IDLES; it was produced by Aaron Dessner. Welch says, “I wanted it to feel like you were disintegrating into nothing at the end. Which is sometimes what the creative process feels to me.”
Everybody Scream is out Oct. 31.
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