After an emergency medical issue brought her to the brink, the Florence + the Machine musician turned to mysticism and created Everybody Scream, one of her most profound albums to date.&nbsp;

PHOTOGRAPHY Autumn de Wilde&nbsp;
STYLED BY Shirley Kurata&nbsp;
On Zoom from her home in London, Florence Welch sips herbal tea and wears a floral dressing gown, her long, red hair casually arranged in a side braid. She speaks gently and thoughtfully; her sweet rambles occasionally punctuated by a hearty laugh that tends to linger in the air. The vibe is akin to having a cuppa with your favorite hippie aunt, but of course, the reality is that the bookish Brit on the screen is also one of the mightiest frontwomen in the history of rock.
As Florence + the Machine, Welch burst onto the global music scene in 2007. Her songs, such as &ldquo;Dog Days Are Over&rdquo; and &ldquo;Shake It Out,&rdquo; have become somewhat ubiquitous, thanks, in part, to Welch&rsquo;s recognizable lilt. Now 39, her career has spanned much of her young adult life, encompassing 18 years, six albums, and numerous collaborations, which have resulted in sold-out stadium shows and seven Grammy nominations. Welch has paved the way for a range of young female artists, but her brand of folksy baroque pop has historically been harder for critics to categorize; her success differs slightly from that of some of her contemporaries. Her approach to making music is more about working through a core feeling rather than chasing the pop charts. As anyone who has seen Welch perform can attest, she leaves it all on the stage. On two separate occasions, she has broken her foot and still managed to finish the set.
Her love of performing hasn&rsquo;t waned even though she has endured some very real setbacks [trigger warning: pregnancy loss]. In August 2023, Welch announced that she would be missing a few shows on her Dance Fever tour due to a confidential medical issue. During the first of our two conversations, she revealed that she had suffered an ectopic pregnancy onstage, which caused her fallopian tube to rupture. The incident&mdash;now publicly known&mdash;required emergency surgery, and though Welch returned to performing 10 days later, the heavy emotional toll remains. &ldquo;As you can see, I have this well of grief that I&rsquo;m trying to find ways to navigate,&rdquo; she says, visibly shaken. &ldquo;I was in this fog, and I had to find meaning and my own belief system.&rdquo;

Dress McQUEEN Rings TIFFANY & CO.

A voracious reader, Welch turned to books on mythology, witchcraft, and folk horror as a means of healing. Over text, she sends photos of the stacks lining her desk: Midden Witch, Lolly Willowes, and Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft &amp; Mary Shelley. She started writing new music and enlisted Mark Bowen of Idles to help provide <span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px;">an urgent, necessary, and discordant sound that matched her poetic lyrics. The queen of a melodic crescendo, Welch&rsquo;s heart-pumping refrains are back in full force on her newest album, Everybody Scream,<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px;"> which also features contributions from Mitski and The National&rsquo;s Aaron Dessner.
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A corresponding world tour is lined up for 2026. How is Welch feeling about it? &ldquo;All of the things that make me not very functional [in daily life] become a superpower onstage,&rdquo; she says. &ldquo;You know, like the leaky emotions. That layer of boundary that I just don&rsquo;t have. It all becomes so useful for performance.&rdquo;
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Jacket GIVENCHY BY SARAH BURTON Tights FALKE Shoes SAINT LAURENT BY ANTHONY VACCARELLO

L&rsquo;OFFICIEL: We initially spoke in September, when you privately shared the story of the ectopic pregnancy that you suffered onstage. Weeks later, how are you feeling about having this news out in the world?
FLORENCE WELCH: You were actually the first person I told about it. I think that&rsquo;s why I was just so emotional [at the time]. I couldn&rsquo;t hold it in. And weirdly, now that it&rsquo;s out, I feel like it&rsquo;s almost easier to talk about. It&rsquo;s not a secret anymore. I do feel more relaxed.
L&rsquo;O: By sharing your story, you are undoubtedly helping others who have gone through a similar experience.
FW: I&rsquo;ve basically stayed offline, but apparently, people have been so kind. I wanted someone out there who has been through it to read it and not feel alone. You know, it&rsquo;s so shadowy and lonely. I think of songwriting as making connections, reaching out, and being able to hold someone, even if you&rsquo;re not there. I had this feeling of wanting to wrap my arms around anyone who [this] ever happened to and just hold them.

Dress VALENTINO Hat PIERS ATKINSON Earrings GIVENCHY BY SARAH BURTON Shoes VALENTINO GARAVANI

L&rsquo;O: Your 2011 album, Ceremonials, was released around Halloween, and now Everybody Scream is following a similar timeframe. What&rsquo;s the significance of Halloween for you?
FW: It&rsquo;s more to do with the holiday&rsquo;s pagan roots [in Ireland] than dressing up, really. Halloween was the time when the veil between the living and the dead was said to be at its thinnest. For this album, I didn&rsquo;t realize how close death was. It was sort of like, Oh, death is just a doorway. Also, if the last album [Dance Fever]&nbsp;was a fairy tale, this one is a horror film, so it all made sense.
L&rsquo;O: You&rsquo;ve mentioned that mysticism and healing are big themes for this record.
FW: Modern medicine saved my life, but people couldn&rsquo;t really tell me why. I had to find meaning. I became really interested in witchcraft, magic, and medicine, because what happened to me was so violent. I wanted to study the different forms of healing, which led me down a path of exploring esoteric and pagan rituals as well as British occultism. I also spent a lot of time researching at The Warburg Institute [a research center in London]. It was my way through the two years, figuring out how to stitch that into the album and make meaning of [the experience].

Jacket and shirt DIOR

L&rsquo;O: The songs carry a certain sense of urgency.
FW: I started writing it with [Mark] Bowen, from the punk band Idles, while I was still on the Dance Fever tour. Working with someone who&rsquo;s so interested in discordance and aggressive sounds was actually really perfect at the time. He&rsquo;s really into mythology, and we listened to a mix of doom folk and hyper-pop. The other thing was that [the pregnancy] was something I had desired. I went into it with this feeling of wanting something. It felt very animal-like and natural, and then it suddenly became a violent experience. So, researching, reading, and pulling together this album became my way out of the fog.
L&rsquo;O: I hope making the album has been cathartic for you in all the ways that making art can be.
FW: I was reading about grief rituals that commemorate loss&mdash;like petals in the bath or burying something precious like a flower&mdash;but this didn&rsquo;t feel like a flower to me. This didn&rsquo;t feel soft. The fury that I felt didn&rsquo;t translate into something sad, you know? I really needed that energy. I needed to scream because when it happens to you, you are silent. You can&rsquo;t scream. There&rsquo;s nothing to be done. You have to go into surgery right away, or you might die. And so I feel like the album that came out was just, like, fuuuuuck.

<text class="_textbox_x434h_15" direction="ltr" height="20.97003173828125" lengthadjust="spacingAndGlyphs" textlength="37.980010986328125" x="342.1037902832031" y="-520.5302124023438" data-test="textbox">The fury that I felt didn't translate into something sad, you know?&nbsp;</text>

L&rsquo;O: That makes total sense when you go through something that traumatic and come out the other side.
FW: This is the most personal album I&rsquo;ve ever made, but it&rsquo;s also my most mythological in a sense. I wanted to create my own folk horror songs within it. I&rsquo;ve always done that with my personal struggles. Like when I was struggling with drinking by age 18. I always turn to the mystical or the metaphorical.
L&rsquo;O: Do you turn to literature or history as a way to help you understand what you&rsquo;re going through?
FW: It&rsquo;s protective in some way, yeah. I think it comes from being overly imaginative, and it&rsquo;s a way of controlling that imagination and doing something positive with it, because otherwise it&rsquo;s just relentlessly terrifying for me. I process the world through stories. I love fantasy. It&rsquo;s soothing.

Dress, belt, and shoes GUCCI

L&rsquo;O: How are you feeling now?
FW: I feel so much more confident in my body at 39 than I ever did at 29. It&rsquo;s crazy. It&rsquo;s this sense that I have this body and I&rsquo;ve put it through so much&mdash;eating disorders, drinking, and now this. I want to enjoy this body as well; there&rsquo;s a sense of wanting to be alive in it, you know? There&rsquo;s a willingness to care less about what people think.
L&rsquo;O: There&rsquo;s power in that for sure.
FW: As a famous woman, off stage, I&rsquo;m always trying to be so nice and polite. I&rsquo;m treading so carefully through the world, almost like, not to make a ripple, you know? It&rsquo;s almost safer to be really small. And then on stage, the boundaries of society just break and smash open. And I can be terrifying, and I can be huge, and I get to experience my body in a very different way. So, the song &ldquo;Everybody Scream&rdquo; is sort of about how the stage has hurt me now in ways that are insane, but I keep returning to it because it&rsquo;s the place where I feel the most free.

Jacket and shoes BALENCIAGA Bra and suspender belt I.D. SARRIERI Stockings FALKE Earrings, necklace, bracelet, and rings BULGARI

L&rsquo;O: You&rsquo;re really the engine of Florence + the Machine. In addition to being the frontwoman, you&rsquo;re also the main lyricist and producer, and you play percussion and piano. Do you feel like people recognize that you&rsquo;re doing all that work?
FW: It&rsquo;s a nice question to be asked, because people often care a lot less about, like, how women make music. The personal is always first. People don&rsquo;t often ask the technical questions. They&rsquo;re just like, Who&rsquo;s it about? [Laughs] Bowen and I started working together and sharing via a Notes app. I would write lyrics and then Bowen would come in with, I have this glam rock&ndash;bass thing and then this crazy discordance that sounds like a scream.
L&rsquo;O: You&rsquo;ve also successfully collaborated with a variety of artists, including Calvin Harris, A$AP Rocky, and Taylor Swift; how do you decide which projects to take on?
FW: I&rsquo;ve never made decisions based on whether I think something&rsquo;s going to be commercially successful. I&rsquo;ll do it because I enjoy the work, and it feels good to me. If people really like it and it&rsquo;s a big success, that&rsquo;s great, but also, I have no desire to be more visible than I am. My psyche would not be able to withstand that kind of attention.
L&rsquo;O: And yet you own the stage! Are you channeling some of your witchiness when you&rsquo;re performing?
FW: Concerts are sort of agnostic churches. I feel like if you&rsquo;re a fan of my work, and if you come to the concerts, you&rsquo;ll meet people who have that same kind of spirit. If I meet a fan who&rsquo;s really in, I&rsquo;m like, Oh, okay. You get it.

Dress LOEWE Earrings and rings CARTIER

L&rsquo;O: Are you preparing differently for the Everybody Scream tour than you have for past tours?
FW: I&rsquo;m actually training more than I ever have before. I&rsquo;m more aware of the fragility of the body, which I wasn&rsquo;t before. I didn&rsquo;t think of myself as having a body! In performance, you&rsquo;re in like the etheric plane or whatever, and you feel like the body can do anything. And in some ways, my body can. I&rsquo;ve performed through broken bones and internal bleeding and managed to finish the shows. But now I&rsquo;m wanting to take care of my body a bit more, you know, more respect for what I put it through.
For this one, I&rsquo;m undergoing physiotherapy, which is working through every part of my body to get as strong as possible, from my feet to my wrists. I also went back to opera training, because I got scared to push my voice in case it broke. [The teacher] told me, You don&rsquo;t have to be afraid. All you have to do is relax. The sound is there. Trust your body; trust the voice. As soon as I wasn&rsquo;t afraid to hit the big notes, they came back.

It's a sense of strength in the sensuality, as if it were taken from me, and I wanted to reclaim it.&nbsp;

L&rsquo;O: What are you feeling stylistically for this tour?
FW: Since this album is so personal and so raw, I wanted to feel like the visual world around it was incredibly solid. I want all those elements of folk horror and horror movies to be reflected in the stage show as well. We&rsquo;re doing a bit of a different show this time. The stage is [one] that we&rsquo;ve never had before. If you have been closely examining the videos and following them, you will notice some elements that will also be incorporated into the stage performance.
L&rsquo;O: Are you still in regular touch with [Valentino&rsquo;s] Alessandro [Michele]? You guys seem like kindred spirits.
FW: We are. I love Ale. I&rsquo;m always sending him things like, You have to look at this crazy memento mori thing on eBay, or you have to get this tapestry or tassel thing on Etsy.&nbsp;

Jacket, shirt, and pants VALENTINO Ring GILLIAN HORSUP

L&rsquo;O: Are you good at Etsy-ing? I feel like that&rsquo;s a real skill.
FW: I&rsquo;m always looking for tapestry cushions and tassels. I want tassels on everything. I&rsquo;m always trolling for Laura Ashley, Gunne Sax dresses, and weird &lsquo;80s tapestries.
L&rsquo;O: The music video for &ldquo;Everybody Scream&rdquo; felt very apropos for the times, especially the part about digging a hole in the ground and screaming into it.
FW: It&rsquo;s the first thing I wanted to do when I came back, and the great thing about working with [frequent collaborator, director] Autumn de Wilde is that she&rsquo;s like, Sure, yeah. Let&rsquo;s do it. We drew inspiration from horror movies like Rosemary&rsquo;s Baby and iconic Italian &lsquo;60s and &lsquo;70s horror films, such as Blood and Black Lace, which are known for their giallo style, where every woman who dies somehow ends up in her bra. [Laughs] And also an incredible documentary called Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched, which is about folk horror films in different countries.

Jacket GIVENCHY BY SARAH BURTON Tights FALKE

L&rsquo;O: What about the costumes? That red dress really stood out.
FW: Weirdly, it felt important to be naked. I feel so naked with this record, and I also felt a need to return to earth and nature. It&rsquo;s a sense of strength in the sensuality, as if it were taken from me, and I wanted to reclaim it. I worked with the costume designer Shirley Kurata. We pulled from costume houses and a lot of vintage from my own wardrobe, actually. I have a huge archive of vintage items now. I stopped drinking and got into buying vintage.
L&rsquo;O: Transference. I think it&rsquo;s called transference.
FW: Yeah, I mean, honestly, my accountant maybe would prefer it if I just started drinking. I&rsquo;m kidding; they wouldn&rsquo;t. [Laughs]

HAIR: Daniel Dyer using R+CO MAKEUP: Sarah Reygate CAROL HAYES MANAGEMENT using CHANTECAILLE SET DESIGN: Kave Quinn PROPS: Rob Hedderwick using SUMMERILL &amp; BISHOP PRODUCED BY: Small Cat, Gloria Bowman, Imogen Stoddart, and Chelsea Wiercx LIGHTING: J Mims POST PRODUCTION: June Bhongjan PHOTO ASSISTANTS: Sinclar Jaspard Mandy, Jemima Le Sueur, and Ellie Gibson STYLING ASSISTANT: Olivia Sandford-Wilson PROPS ASSISTANT: George Gunn PRODUCTIONS ASSISTANTS: Rosie Meyer, Matt Lamb, and Jake Huxtable LOCATION: Camfield Place

For Florence Welch, Grief Has Become A Superpower

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