Florence Welch reveals The 1975 song mentioned on new album
On October 31st, Florence Welch released the Florence and the Machine album, Everybody Scream. She has since dissected lyrics in which she explicitly referenced The 1975.
Chatting with Rolling Stone about the new project, which includes 12 tracks, including huge hit singles, ‘Everybody Scream’ and ‘One of the Greats’, Welch opened up about her lyrical investigation into the industry’s inherent sexism.
Specifically, on the track ‘Music by Men’, Welch sings, “Breaking my bones/Getting four out of five/Listening to a song by the 1975/I thought, ‘Fuck it, I might as well give music by men a try.” In reference to this song, Welch was asked which The 1975 song she was referencing.
Ever the musician, Welch sang her reply: “We’re fucking in a car/Shooting heroin/Saying controversial things.” Evidently, she was talking about the track ‘Love It If We Made It’ from the album A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships.
However, Welch went on to stress that the choice wasn’t exactly personal. “I was like, ‘This song is really good!’ A big thing with songwriting is it’s often because it rhymes. So you needed a band that rhymed with five.”
She then went on to explain another lyric, particularly “Breaking my bones/Getting four out of five.” Of that section, the singer-songwriter explained, “When I broke my foot ontage, I got four out of five stars for that show. I was like, ‘What more do I have to do?’ I literally bled all over the stage.”
A similar sentiment runs through the Far Out five-star track, ‘One of the Greats’. Speaking about her relationship to the lyrics in that single, she shared, “I just found them really funny. It was this feeling of ‘When is it going to be good enough?’ I give so much, and sometimes I wonder if in that giving and in not having that almost masculine cool of holding stuff back, being obtuse, not saying it all like, ‘What is he saying? That’s so cool. What do those lyrics mean?'”
She went on, “I was like, ‘If I keep giving this much, does that mean people aren’t taking me seriously? But then sometimes when I listen to things that have that level of masculine reserve, I’m just like, ‘Isn’t this kind of boring though? What are they saying?'”
Famously, for their headline set at Glastonbury this year, The 1975 poked fun at their own music, including fake, gibberish lyric videos behind their performance for their old-school hit, ‘Chocolate’.
Deeming her new abum the best full-length in her entire disography, Far Out wrote, “Between the true horror of its lead title track, to her reflections on fame in ‘One of the Greats’ and candid portraiture in ‘Music by Men’, this not only feels like a step forward for Welch in terms of her ethereal sonic universe, but also breaking down metatextural barriers across the rest of pop music.”
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