On the delicate St Jude, which strips everything back to Welch’s pin-sharp voice and a distant electronic rumble, she references both the “patron saint of the lost causes” and the 2013 storm that shared her name. 4 St Jude (2015)Īcross How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful’s 11 tracks, Welch invokes various characters, from Persephone to the Virgin Mary. There is not an ounce of subtlety on display here (its firework-esque harp coda is joined by the sound of actual fireworks, for example), which only makes its youthful, cartwheeling exuberance all the more accurate. 5 Cosmic Love (2009)Īnother song created on a hangover, Lungs’ sixth single takes a classic subject – being really really in love – and straps it to a rocket aimed at the moon. They performed this maximalist baroque pop rager, which finds Welch trying to shake an almighty hangover by exorcising it from her body by sheer force alone. In 2011, Florence + the Machine were big enough to be handed a coveted performance slot on The X Factor, a nod to Welch’s vocal influence on a plethora of “kooky” young hopefuls. Three months later she was back with Harris at the top on this gloriously sugary confection, Welch sounding as if she’s having the time of her life while Harris unleashes a rapid-fire electronic blitzkrieg around her. In 2012, Welch dipped her toe in EDM’s WKD-coloured waters not once but twice, with Calvin Harris first sending a remix of Ceremonials’ Spectrum to No 1.
From there the song keeps building, like a raging fire fuelled by the opening verse’s slow burn anger at societal expectations placed on women. Later, as the song starts to wrestle with itself, Welch snaps: “Oh God, what do I know?” 12 King (2022)Īround the two-minute 45 seconds mark of this first single from next month’s Dance Fever, Welch unleashes an almighty, wordless roar, as if making it very clear that High As Hope’s sonic retreat was an anomaly. Over airy production, here she half-remembers nights spent holding hands with strangers “high on E”, and relishes in the false certainty of “it doesn’t get better than this”. Photograph: Sergione Infuso - Corbis/Corbis/Getty Images 13 South London Forever (2018)Ĭreated at the start of her 30s, High As Hope excels when Welch looks back at her youth with misty-eyed clarity. Here she is overwhelmed by bodies of water, a place both beautiful and deadly. Named after Frida Kahlo’s 1938 painting, Ceremonials’ more rock-leaning promotional single (AKA the one before the proper single), finds Welch returning to a lyrical trope trying to understand the vastness of something too enormous to understand. On Lungs’ propulsive fourth single, a new crush elicits the kind of high-wire emotions more akin to drowning, an exhausted Welch left “as empty as that beating drum”. While her early pop contemporaries Lily Allen and Adele turned relationships into soap operas and kitchen-sink dramas, Welch spun them into gothic fantasies. “I thought I was flying but maybe I’m dying tonight,” Welch sings softly over distant harp flutters.
Lyrically it ponders the paradox of performing live, exploring the huge highs that only temporarily pierce moments of strange isolation. High As Hope’s lead single feels like a soft caress in comparison to the usual cold, hard slap of a big chart-facing hit.
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