Florence + The Machine have shared their new single, “One of the Greats.” Listen to it below.
The simmering track is from the band’s upcoming sixth studio album, Everybody Scream, which is scheduled for release on October 31st. Building on IDLES guitarist Mark Bowen’s riff and Welch’s evocative vocals, it features the brilliantly scathing lyrics, “It must be nice to be a man and make boring music just because you can.”
“I don’t really know how to explain myself with this one, it was sort of a long poem about the cost of greatness,” singer Florence Welch revealed in a press statement. “Me and Bowen from IDLES wrote it in one take. He played the guitar and I just sang it straight from the page. We meant to re-record it but the first take just had this amazing energy. Then Aaron Dessner helped us take it to a truly transcendent place. I wanted it to feel like you were disintegrating into nothing at the end. Which is sometimes what the creative process feels to me. Death and resurrection over and over.”
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“One of the Greats” follows the album’s title track, which was released last month. Everybody Scream will be the group’s first full-length effort since 2022’s Dance Fever.
While touring in support of the album, Welch had to undergo emergency life-saving surgery, forcing the band to cancel several shows. Last year, the outfit put on a special 15th anniversary performance of their debut album, Lungs, as part of the BBC Proms festival.