It’s been three years since Florence + the Machine released arguably their best album to date, Dance Fever. In that time, Florence Welch embarked on the Dance Fever Tour (from 2022 to 2023), which, even before Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, seemed to further forge the unbreakable and, that’s right, feverish bond shared between her and her fans. With the first single from her new era, “Everybody Scream,” it almost feels as though she’s responding to that intense period in much the same way Swift is also about to with The Life of a Showgirl. And yes, it’s only too appropriate that Welch and Swift recorded and released a song together (“Florida!!!”) while both were in the thick of their respective tours.
With Welch seeking to capture the feeling she gets while onstage (and lighting it up, as it were), the theme of “Everybody Scream” draws easy comparisons to “Morning Elvis,” the fourteenth and final track on the standard edition of Dance Fever. Throughout the song, Welch touts the stage as her simultaneous bane and salvation—though mostly the latter. Or, as she phrases it on “Morning Elvis,” “And if I make it to the stage/I’ll show you what it means/To be saved.” As for the “if” part, the song refers to a time in her life when she was often too drunk or hungover to do much of anything, let alone make it to Graceland, where she had planned to visit “the King’s” home circa 2012 during the Ceremonials Tour. But, considering Presley’s own substance abuse issues, Welch isn’t wrong when she says, “I never got to see Elvis/I just sweated it out in a hotel room/But I think the king woulda understood/Why I never made it to Graceland.” Undoubtedly.
However, unlike Elvis, Welch managed to get herself together long enough to become sober, understanding that it was ultimately doing more harm than good not only to her creativity, but to her ability to perform. The thing she so clearly loves most in the world. And yet, as she told The New York Times, “I thought the way to hang onto your rock n’ roll roots was to be the drunkest person in the room.” That “philosophy” clearly no longer being the dominant belief in her life. Instead, it’s as though a combination of witchcraft and performing has replaced her erstwhile drinking compulsion. Granted, Welch was always a “witchy woman,” but it’s a “shtick” that’s most definitely ramped up since the release of Dance Fever (even giving Stevie Nicks a run for her strega money). The album inspired by a tincture of the Covid lockdowns and early modern Europe—specifically, the choreomania phenomenon of that period. Within the context of confinement, it was the idea of being able to dance and sing and generally make merriment again within a communal setting that sparked the broader Dance Fever concept. For, although she had once yearned for her tours to be over so that she could take a break, the advent of the pandemic lockdowns and restrictions led to the verse in “Morning Elvis” that goes, “And after every tour, I swear I’ll quit [Madonna, too, has said the same thing before]/It’s over, boys, now this is it/But the call, it always comes/And the songs like children beggin’ to be born/But, oh, I guess I got my wish/But anything, anything, anything but this.”
The “this” was an inability to perform in public for what amounted to two years. So it was that, like many musicians during Covid, Welch spent her time crafting and plotting the next album, to be released at a time when everyone could “commingle” again. And oh, how she and her fans did just that on the Dance Fever Tour. This period being an undeniable inspiration to the opening verse of “Everybody Scream”: “Get on the stage, and I call her by her first name/Try to stay away, but I always meet her back at this place/She gives me everything, I feel no pain/I break down, get up and do it all again/Because it’s never enough, and she makes me feel loved.” The “she” in question represents not only the “muse” that keeps “forcing” her to feel inspired, but also, one might say, the “Goddess of Performing” (or maybe just the Goddess of Dance, Terpsichore). A fellow witch that keeps enchanting Welch, enticing her back to the stage. Where the spotlight burns hot with seduction. Not just because “here, I don’t have to be quiet/Here, I don’t have to be kind/Extraordinary and normal all at the same time,” but because it is a place where she most truly feels alive and among “her people.” The same goes for Florence + the Machine fans when they’re in attendance at one of their shows. Only too happy to oblige Welch when she commands, “Everybody dance!/Everybody sing!/Everybody move!/Everybody scream!”
So no, Welch isn’t being a “braggart” when she flexes, “I’ll make you sing for me, I’ll make you scream.” And from the instant that the whimsical sound of “Everybody Scream” begins, complete with Welch’s pythoness-esque vocalizing, it’s apparent that this is a song that very much still exists in the world of Dance Fever.
This includes working once again with director Autumn de Wilde, who Welch began collaborating with back in 2018 (via the video for “Big God”), as well as choreographer Ryan Heffington (who worked on the choreo for Dance Fever’s “King,” “My Love,” “Free” and “Heaven is Here”). However, this time around, Welch is branching out in terms of who she’s co-producing with. That is to say, not Jack Antonoff or Dave Bayley. At least, if the co-producers of “Everybody Scream” are anything to go by: Mark Bowen (of Idles), who also co-wrote the track (along with, incidentally, Mitski), James Ford (perhaps now most known as being part of Last Shadow Puppets) and Aaron Dessner (of The National, but perhaps now most known for co-producing Taylor Swift songs).
As for some of the “dual meanings” of the song, it can be argued that although, in the same way that Miley Cyrus’ “End of the World” isn’t really about the imminent apocalypse that keeps revealing signs of itself every day, just because Florence + the Machine’s “Everybody Scream” isn’t about the only thing left that seems like a viable (and affordable) coping mechanism doesn’t mean it can’t still be interpreted that way. Hence, the image of Welch screaming into a hole that’s been dug into the ground of some rural setting (one of the clips she teased before releasing the video) holding so much weight for non-performers and performers alike. After all, how else is one supposed to deal with living in this ever-maddening, ever-decaying world?
For Welch, it seems, the best way to do so isn’t just performing onstage for her fans or screaming into a hole, but also wandering through the (Yorkshire) countryside in a bright red dress (the kind of red that can be described as “devil red”) with some fellow “witches” screaming as they flank her. This giving plenty of Dance Fever (read: medieval) energy. As a matter of fact, the overarching sense of women instilling “fear” in others by expressing themselves freely (particularly through dance) is one of the core concepts behind the record, repeated again in “Everybody Scream.”
In a Universal Music press release for Dance Fever, it was stated, “The image and concept of dance, and choreomania, remained central as Florence wove her own experiences of dance—a discipline she turned to in the early days of sobriety—with the folkloric elements of a moral panic from the Middle Ages. In recent times of torpor and confinement, dance offered propulsion, energy and a way of looking at music more choreographically.” The same elements are at play in “Everybody Scream” (therefore, likely the eponymous album itself). Not just the sound and lyrics, but especially the accompanying visual, during which Welch essentially takes over a room, spellbinding those in her orbit as she dances on a table and watches them all become “possessed” by some unseen force (hint: it’s the power of her performance…and the generally free feeling of being in a “safe space”).
And so, once again Welch is turning to notions of choreomania as related to “moral panic” in the period just after the Middle Ages and at the dawn of the Renaissance. Except that, this time around, the continued exploration of these themes arrives at a time when the wielding of moral panic (a.k.a. satanic panic) by a certain Orange Creature (a devil in his own right) for purposes related to constantly securing “the Christian vote” is only too resonant (and the reason why people need all “the witchcraft, the medicine, the spells and the injections” they can get). As is the fact that Florence + the Machine is releasing Everybody Scream on Halloween (ergo, filming part of the video at the spooky Wythenshawe Hall in Manchester), the time of year when the divide between the realms that separate the living from the dead is meant to weaken.
However, if the dead should deign to enter the realm of the living this year, they might be hard-pressed to find the difference between that ilk and themselves. Save for the precious few “rambunctious” types, like Welch, who still remember what it is to be alive.
