Florence Lungs Album

[Theodor Urena]

Lungs received generally positive reviews from music critics, with Welch drawing comparisons to the likes of Kate Bush and Fiona Apple. It appeared on several year-end critics' lists in late 2009. The album won the award for British Album of the Year at the Brit Awards. Commercially, Lungs reached number one in Poland and the United Kingdom, and number 14 in the US Billboard 200, selling over 3 million copies worldwide.

The album was supported by six singles, all of which were supplemented by accompanying music videos. "Kiss with a Fist" peaked at 51 in the United Kingdom while "Dog Days Are Over" and "Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)" also charted in Australia and Belgium. Three further singles followed the release of the album, "Drumming Song", a cover of the song "You've Got the Love", and "Cosmic Love". Their cover of the Source and Candi Staton song became the group's first top-10 entry. To promote the album, Florence and the Machine embarked on the Lungs Tour between 2008 and 2011. A live album from this concert was released in 2010, titled Live at the Wiltern.

Prior to recording Lungs, Florence Welch had considered or attempted several different projects in the music industry, including an interest in becoming a country singer, recording folk songs she had written, and collaborating with Razorlight's frontman Johnny Borrell, but ultimately she was unsatisfied with those endeavors.[4] Welch and Borrell wrote several songs together.[citation needed] In 2007, Welch fronted the hip hop-influenced group Ashok, recording an early version of "Kiss with a Fist", titled "Happy Slap", for their debut studio album, Plans.[4][5]

It was not until Welch began writing and recording with childhood friend Isabella Summers at Antenna Studios in London that Welch crafted a sound she wanted to develop further.[6] Distraught but also inspired from a recently failed relationship, Welch recorded with "enthusiasm over skills", stating, "I'm quite glad I never learned to play the guitar, because I think I'd write songs that were more classically structured. As it is, I've had to create my own way of writing, which isn't typical. Everything's a big crescendo."[4] For a brief while, Welch and Summers performed as a duo called Florence Robot/Isa Machine in small London venues.[7] Over the coming months, Robert Ackroyd (guitar, backing vocals), Chris Hayden (drums, percussion, backing vocals), Mark Saunders (bass guitar, backing vocals) and Tom Monger (harp) were recruited to form a band, renamed Florence and the Machine.[8] In November 2008, Welch signed a recording contract with Island Records.[4] Prior to recording the album, Welch spent a long time honing her sound while working with guitarists, intent on "[making] it into something that was a wave of sound that would envelop, something that was soaring, slightly church-like and then-doomlike."[9]

The imagery of Lungs, featuring a style derived from the Ante-Donatello Brotherhood, was handled by two of Welch's friends: photographer Tom Beard and art director Tabitha Denholm, who are partners at the studio Partizan. Denholm also plays with the band's manager Mairead Nash in the DJ duo Queens of Noize.[22] For the album cover, Denholm created a concept built around a pair of lungs worn visibly on Welch's chest. Welch's personal stylist Aldene Johnson handled the wardrobe, "an Emma Cook chain dress that was in a kind of 1920s style",[23] while Orlando Weeks, an art student and frontman of the band the Maccabees, built the prosthetic lungs, which he intended to give "a Victoriana, industrial punchbag kind of look".[24]

Florence and the Machine announced via their website on 24 September 2010 that Lungs would be re-released on 15 November as a two-disc package titled Between Two Lungs. The reissue features new sleeve art, liner notes by Welch, and a 12-track bonus disc including live versions, remixes, Welch's mashup collaboration with Dizzee Rascal, "You Got the Dirtee Love", and "Heavy in Your Arms", which was released as a single from the soundtrack to The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (2010).[25] The live recordings are taken from the band's performance at the 2010 iTunes Festival, most of which were not previously available on the band's iTunes Festival: London 2010 EP.

On 27 February 2011, Lungs: The B-Sides was released exclusively in the United States to digital music retailers such as the iTunes Store and Amazon MP3.[26][2] This was followed by the release of a deluxe edition of Lungs in the US on 26 April 2011, featuring all 11 tracks from Lungs: The B-Sides on a bonus disc to accompany the original 13-track album.[27] On 3 July 2019, ten years after the original release of the album, the band announced that a limited "tenth anniversary edition" was available for pre-order.[28] It was released digitally on 16 August,[29] with the LPs and cassettes released the same day. An exclusive box set was released on 4 October.[30] The box set comprises the original LP; a second LP with "three previously unreleased demo tracks, a rare acoustic version of "My Boy Builds Coffins", a cover of the Beatles' "Oh! Darling" Live at Abbey Road, and a number of B sides [and] rarities."[31] It also includes "postcards and inserts, showcasing previously unseen images from the Lungs era" chosen by Welch herself.[31][32]

"Dog Days Are Over" was released on 1 December 2008 as the album's second single. While the 2010 reissue charted higher, the 2008 release only reached number 89 on the UK Singles Chart.[33]The song was used in the theatrical trailer for the 2010 film Eat Pray Love, starring Julia Roberts.[34] The Yeasayer remix of "Dog Days Are Over", which is included on Between Two Lungs, was released on 12 October 2010 on iTunes.[35]

"Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)" was released as the third single from the album on 22 June 2009, peaking at number 12 on the UK Singles Chart.[33] "Drumming Song" was released as the album's fourth single on 7 September 2009, reaching number 54 in the UK.[33]

"You've Got the Love" was the fifth single to be released from the album, and reached a new peak of number five on the UK Singles Chart in January 2010.[33] The band had recorded a version of this the Source song which had been a live staple and issued it as a B-side to "Dog Days Are Over", but the success of the previous singles made Island request "You've Got the Love" as a single. Welch went on to record new vocal takes with engineer Cenzo Townshend, replacing the first two verses and the first chorus. Townshend also remixed the bass and drums to be "a bit harder and the bottom end a bit heavier."[14] Florence and the Machine's duet with rapper Dizzee Rascal at the 2010 Brit Awards on 16 February 2010, a mashup of "You've Got the Love" and Dizzee Rascal's "Dirtee Cash" titled "You Got the Dirtee Love", was released on iTunes the day after the ceremony.[36][37] "You Got the Dirtee Love" reached number two on the UK chart.[33]

On 5 January 2010, "Hurricane Drunk" was originally announced as the sixth single from the album.[38] A video for the song was filmed in Paris on 8 January 2010 and premiered on 29 January after the Celebrity Big Brother 2010 final on Channel 4.[38][39] However, on 3 March 2010, a reissue of "Dog Days Are Over" was announced through the band's website. The single was released digitally on 11 April and as a seven-inch vinyl the following day, along with a new music video.[40] It reached a peak of number 23 on the UK Singles Chart,[33] later reaching a new peak of number 21 in 2023 following renewed interest in the track after its inclusion in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3.[41]

"Cosmic Love" was released on 5 July 2010 as the album's sixth and final single.[42] The song reached number 51 on the UK Singles Chart.[33] The band made a guest appearance in the 7 February 2011 episode of Gossip Girl, titled "Panic Roommate", where they performed an acoustic rendition of "Cosmic Love".[43]

Following the band's performance of "Dog Days Are Over" at the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards, Lungs jumped from number 44 to number 14 on the US Billboard 200 with sales of 21,000 copies, an increase of 165% from the previous week.[74] The album was certified double platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) on 25 June 2018.[75] It had sold 1,142,000 copies in the United States as of February 2013.[76] Worldwide, Lungs had sold over three million copies as of November 2011.[77]

As the latest enqenue from the UK, it may be easy to package Florence Welch, the front woman of Florence and the Machine, with a neat bow in a gaggle of soulful brit singers. The recent winner of the Brit Award, with her debut album Lungs, didn't get her break by going to the right vocal school and hiring the right management team. She saw a local DJ in the bathroom at a club and decided to belt out a song.

This is not a girl lacking moxy, case in point: "Kiss with a Fist". With lyrics like "I broke your jaw once before / You broke my leg in return," it's not hard to see how this has become one of the more controversial songs in recent Current playlists. Welch claims that the lyrics are metaphorical for the pain that you feel when you are in love. You can make your own call on the meaning, but when Florence sings, you feel what she's feeling. It's Kate Bush by way of Stevie Nicks by way of PJ Harvey with a dash of Whitney Huston (at least in the vocal inflections in "You've got the Love").

The album on a whole is a bit all over the board. There's the summer-day-invoaking-pop-happiness of "The Dog Days are Over", Imogen Heap electro-dreamyness of "Rabbit Heart(Raise it Up)," the folksy pared down love note of "I'm Not Calling You a Liar" and the straight up pop of "You've Got the Love". What all the songs have in common is suicidal, throw yourself off a cliff, burn you to cinder, all-consuming love. But at the end of the album you are singing your own lungs out with her... or at least I was. Maybe I've become a bit of a rock chick lover.

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