10 years ago, British music was having a moment. La Roux was changing the pop landscape with Bulletproof, Lily Allen had broken into the global mainstream with The Fear and The xx were making minimal pop music that would go onto be sampled by Drake and Rihanna. And then there was Florence.
Florence Welch was a 22-year-old from Camberwell, England who had been creating buzz on the internet with early cut Kiss With A Fist and a cover of Cold War Kids' Hospital Beds. While the rest of Britain was churning out polished pop, Florence had a punk attitude with a voice that sounded like it could crack a glass ceiling or break the ground in two. It was erratic - Kate Bush at its height and Debbie Harry at its depth.
It looked as if Florence and her ambiguous group The Machine would be filed closer to The Libertines than Björk but second single Dog Days Are Over changed that. She revealed herself to be a whimsical pop witch. The harp ushered us into lofty verses before the drums punched in and kicked the heart into gear. "The horses are coming so you better run," she sang as if she was already conducting a festival crowd. There was a sense of grandeur to what she was doing. She was unashamedly hyperbolic, full of energy - some of it destructive and some of it beautiful.
The B-side of Dog Days was a cover of Candi Station's You Got The Love. Florence stripped the drum 'n' bass instrumental and coated it with harp and pounding tribal drums. If you had any questions about how big her voice could go, this answered them - huge. The voice was the spectacle but Florence threw herself into it, giving it an unmatchable heart. More than a year later, that song went onto become one of her biggest hits, cracking the top 10 in Australia and the UK. It seems it took people that long to truly get their head around Florence.
After almost a year generating buzz, Florence readied her debut album Lungs. She described it as an album "about guilt, fear, love, death, violence, nightmares, [and] dreams". She preceded it with Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up), a Paul Epworth-produced epic that furthered the heights of Dog Days. Rabbit Heart was able to play pop without explicitly venturing there. She was operating in the world of Ellie Goulding and Marina & The Diamonds but in reality Florence was a solitary beast.
In a Guardian interview from the previous year, Florence recounted being at a Versace party in Milan with Beyoncé and JAY-Z. She was starstruck but noted, "I'm slightly unambitious, you know? I'm quite happy to bimble around. In the Twilight Zone." While she may have believed that Lungs told a very different story, there was nothing quaint about the giddy heights of Cosmic Love or the wild shrieking of Howl. Here was an artist who was ambitious without even knowing it. Her musical impulses were going to make her famous whether she liked it or not.
Lungs was big. At times, it felt as if she was trying to play a game with herself as to how big she could go. On the hauntingly dark Girl With One Eye she takes steps up the vocal ladder, reaching an unbelievably powerful height by the end. On Hurricane Drunk she matches the euphoria and recklessness with a lofty vocal performance that feels like it could fall off at anytime. She never does but that sense of vocal danger was part of the spectacle. The big voices of our time (Celine, Aretha, Whitney, Beyoncé) always felt as if they were in complete control. Florence didn't and that was thrilling.
While the voice was a weapon, there was more to her. Low and behold, the queen of grandeur also had an intimate side which provided some of the albums most stunning moments. I'm Not Calling You A Liar, was a personal, string-laden statement. Florence once said she wasn't "brave enough" to be direct in her lyrics like her peers (Lily Allen, Kate Nash). She felt like she had to rely on metaphor but here was Florence staring someone in the eye and saying, "don't lie to me". Directness is something she's since embraced. On recent single Hunger she opened with, "At 17 I started to starve myself."
Of course, Lungs was also a dark fantasy. Florence was obsessed with the idea of death. In 2011, she told Vanity Fair, "music is an exorcism." She used death not only as a tool of darkness in her music but also as an expression of liberation. On the jangly My Boy Builds Coffins she playfully toys with the idea of her boyfriend making coffins. There's a sense of elation about the idea of him building a coffin for both him and her. On the thundering closer Blinding she uses death as a metaphor for letting go of the past.
Death isn't often the obvious topic for chart-topping popstars but that's what made Florence so unique. She made this dark, wondrous album that stood as an anomaly in 2009. While she's been quoted as an inspiration many times (even by Beyoncé), Lungs hardly changed the pop landscape. Instead, it launched a superstar who has remained in her own lane, both as a performer and a musician.
That's not to say that Lungs had zero impact. Producer James Ford had never really produced a pop record before but went onto work with HAIM, Jessie Ware and Little Boots. Meanwhile Epworth has become a giant, producing for Adele, Sia, Rihanna and Coldplay. Florence's boho, vintage shop style also became iconic landing her in Vogue and Harper's Bazaar. New York Times called her, "a refreshing new fashion muse."
Florence could never make Lungs now and it's for the best. She's been sober since she was 27 and in 2011, she recalled touring Lungs as being "almost out of control". This year, in an essay about her sobriety, she recalled her teenage years as being "terrible and wonderful". That's what her debut is. It's a mix of heightened emotion and while, from a lyrical perspective, she may not still be that artist, it's an important and thrilling bookmark for her. It was the work of an artist who felt it all and put it into a dark, liberating, wild and whimsical record. Lungs was the beginning of a once-in-a-lifetime artist and we've been learning with her ever since.
