Florence + The Machine considers the cost of greatness with her new single ‘One Of The Greats’, from forthcoming album ‘Everybody Scream’

Florence + The Machine have released a new single, ‘One Of The Greats’, taken from Florence Welch’s forthcoming sixth album, ‘Everybody Scream’. The track received its first play as Jack Saunders’ Hottest Record on BBC Radio 1.

The single follows the album’s title track, unveiled last month with a video directed by Autumn de Wilde. ‘Everybody Scream’ is written and produced by Florence with collaborators including Mark Bowen of IDLES, Aaron Dessner and Mitski. Bowen also appears in the video for ‘Everybody Scream’.

Welch explains of ‘One Of The Greats’: “I don’t really know how to explain myself with this one, it was sort of a long poem about the cost of greatness. Who gets to decide what that is? Why do I even want it? Why am I never satisfied.

“I feel like I die a little bit every time I make a record, and kind of literally nearly died on the last tour. Yet I always dig myself up to try again, always trying to please that one person who doesn’t like it, or finally feel like I made something perfect and I can rest.

“Early in my career, I was consistently ridiculed and derided for the bigness of my expression. I was thrust into the spotlight but also told again and again I didn’t deserve it, or that because it wasn’t to their taste it wasn’t good. So maybe this is a 15-year outpouring of frustration. But also, a lot of the lines I just left in because I thought they were funny.

“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.”

The album emerged in the aftermath of the ‘Dance Fever’ tour, during which Welch underwent lifesaving surgery. Her recovery informed the record’s preoccupations with spiritual mysticism, witchcraft and folk horror, and its reflections on womanhood, partnership, ageing and mortality.