Review: King (2022) by Florence + the Machine

The brand new song by one of my favourite songwriters.

Nearly 4 years after the release of their last album, Florence + the Machine are back with yet another incredible track written by the band's lead, Florence Welch. This one seems to have come out of nowhere, but given how much I loved their 2018 album 'High as Hope', I can't complain. And having been out a mere 5 hours as of this post, here are my initial thoughts on 'King'.

In true Florence style, this new single sounds larger than life. It is filled with throbbing drums, fluttering harmonies, deep piano strokes, and the band's signature tambourine. The lyrics are brutal, and at times, Florence sounds as if the words come just from her throat; as eery and low as a death rattle. Like a lot of Florence + the Machine songs, the pleasantries of easy listening are all but abandoned in favour of a more compelling narrative. On this particular song, Florence writes about the difficult choices she must make as a female performer in a male-dominated industry. Now thirty-five, Florence has said for the first time in her life she has felt the difference between herself and her male counterparts: that to balance her career and family life might not be as simple for her as it is for them. The song opens with "We argue in the kitchen about whether to have children/About the world ending and the scale of my ambition", making it clear it is her career, not her partner's, that would be compromised by starting a family. Even more importantly, she knows that her life as an artist forces her to exist in an environment that is far from ideal for raising a child. She sings: "You need your rotten heart/Your dazzling pain like diamond rings/You need to go to war to find material to sing/ I am no mother, I am no bride, I am King". She is worried that by adopting a mundane life away from the spotlight, she will lose the inspiration to write. The paradox is that the emotional torment she must put herself through as an artist is the very thing that stops her from achieving the happiness that comes along with starting a family. And what a tough pill to swallow; that she can't have what so many 21st-century women want: a family AND a career. Her career is all she can have. And as a woman who has found success in a man's world, she should be happy with that, right? Wrong. The men around her will never have to make this choice, but if she has to, she will choose to be even better than they are. More than they are. She will be King.

Favourite Lyric: "But a woman is a changeling, always shifting shape/Just when you think you have it figured out/Something new begins to take/What strange claws are these, scratching at my skin/I never knew my killer would be coming from within"