I love Florence + the Machine. I have no idea if that’s true of everybody or nobody. I don’t even know if an “&” can properly substitute the “+” in the band’s name. I approach pop culture the way I approach math, science, and life in general: I don’t get it and I don’t want to get it. I’d rather go on liking what I like, thinking what I think, and doing what I do, however unpopular or “wrong.” Of course, this approach is not infallible. At the very least, it often leads me to say quasi-embarrassing things like, “Have you heard of Adele? Does she have any non-weepy songs?” and “I really don’t think butter comes from milk. That would be disgusting.” But regardless of popular opinion or known proofs, I am not at all embarrassed to say that I fully believe myself to be the tormented little muse behind Florence + the Machine’s music. Here is my argument.
I am nothing if not delightfully awkward and unthreateningly creepy. Flo’s songs capture precisely that spirit in tone and words. For example, My Boy Builds Coffins is indeed about my work as a commercial litigator. Like Flo’s boy, I also hammer away in sunshine or rain, hired by “kings and queens . . . beggars and liars, gypsies and thieves” to ultimately bury someone. “But it’s not just for work and it isn’t for play.” Every single case is unique, “no two are the same,” and it’s a shame that when my piece is complete with my love and care, it’s more or less thrown in the ground never to be seen again. “It just isn’t fair.”
Similarly, Dog Days Are Over is very clearly about quitting my last job. I don’t know where Flo stood witness when “[I] hid around corners and [I] hid under beds, [when I] killed it with kisses and from it [I] fled,” but she must have. In Drumming Song, Flo outs the secret drumming noise that starts inside my head when my (innocent) crush is around. And Flo’s Third Eye has watched me try to quit any number of bad habits and lose 10 pounds. I know “I am the same, I’m the same, I’m trying to change,” and Flo knows it too.
While I could exhaustively apply myself to each Flo song, my presence is so strong in one particular song that it makes my point fully. Flo begins Falling by confessing that she has “fallen out of favor[,] fallen from grace[,] fallen out of trees[,] fallen on my face[,] fallen out of taxis, [and] out of windows too,” all of which I have done no less than four times each.
The best part follows:
Sometimes I wish for falling
Wish for the release
Wish for falling through the air
To give me some relief
Because falling’s not the problem
When I’m falling I’m at peace
It’s only when I hit the ground
It causes all the grief
This is me. This is my struggle. I’m not good with consequences. I want to fall forever and never hit the ground, and since I can’t do that, “I’ll dance myself up, Dr[i]nk myself down, Find people to love, [Leave] people to drown.”
I’m not scared to jump
I’m not scared to fall
If there was nowhere to land
I wouldn’t be scared at all
But I am scared. And Flo knows it.