Florence + The Machine

0:09All right, so this is a fan Q&A. We had questions sent from all over the world. And I guess we'll start with, how are you feeling? You had a vocal injury recently. I feel a bit like a sort of spook toss, really jittery. Well, you sound great nonetheless. Yeah, the voice is working. The brain, I don't know. I'm glad we're going to be talking then for the next one. Yes, it's going to be interesting. First question comes from Poland, Dominica Kendriska, is her name. And it's a question in regards to voice. In some interviews, you said that you must be careful for your voice and you must be careful what you eat. So what do you eat that's good for your voice? It's not really what you do eat as a question of what you don't drink. So do you avoid? Eat. Shout. It's pretty much being a singer is a funny thing. I mean, basically, you should be sitting in a humidified room, only drinking water, being silent all the time.

0:56But that is impossible. Yeah. I mean, it's just the usual stuff. It's kind of worrying. You just don't drink alcohol. Dominica, don't shout. Don't go out. You can't live like that forever. You have to kind of, on tour, I don't try not to drink and don't go to big shouty clubs. I'm glad you mentioned don't drink because that leads me to the next question from Portland, Oregon. Francesca Pagne, tell us a bit about your writing process for both lyrics and composition. I figured let's talk about no light, no light, because I hear it was written kind of tipsy, maybe. Not that one, actually. No, OK. Quite a few of the other ones, but not that one. I'm glad you're just spelling internet rumors. That's amazing. So this was not written on a tour bus in Amsterdam after a night out. Oh, yeah, it was.

1:41OK. It was. But that was the intro. The intro was written years, years ago. It was Rob's birthday, actually. And we'd gone to a. Who's Rob? Rob, Rob the guitarist. Oh, there we go. We were sitting just there, where you are now. We'd been to an all night restaurant for Rob's birthday, called Midnight's in Brussels, which we have never been able to find again. So we think we might have imagined it, or it might not have been real, or it was like a secret portal that we'll never find again. But we just lost the address. But we went there, and then we got on the tour bus around in about four in the morning. And it was a composing this song in the front of the bus, and we recorded the sounds of the bus. And it was just that it was the intro for no light, no light.

2:26And then, yes, we did to try. Well, this is our work, our work sort of ethic, because we've written the intro that celebrate. So we could only find a sports bar that would give us Midori, though. It wasn't the biggest celebration. Next question is from Ashley Seymour in Montag, Michigan. When did you discover that singing was your passion? Did you always know? I've always loved singing. I think it was more of a question of how I was going to do it than I always wanted to. I was constantly singing around the house. And my whole life was a chorus of shut up from my family, and at school, and in hallways, and so many corridors and stuff by myself singing. I've serenaded quite a few corridors in my time.

3:14I think we all, yours probably sounded better than mine. Stairwells are the best for acoustics. Oh, there you go. Yeah. Good to know. Maybe that's what I've been missing all these years ago. That and bathroom tiles. OK. It wasn't OK. I was thinking around. I was going, let's talk about the harp behind you here. Because harps don't come out in rock and roll too often. So when did you decide and why did you decide that you wanted a harp in your band? Well, it was kind of a fluke, really. We did a lot of, when we first started writing songs like Dog Days and Cosmic Love, we had this. We were so fond of it. It actually got burned in a fire. This isn't a person. This is a keyboard. But all our equipment set fire in, whether it be touring in Europe. And we called it, I'm really sick. I'm going to swear.

3:59We used to call it the shit keyboard. Because it was cost like 100 pounds. But it had all these clunky sounds on it that didn't. And I thought there was something so fascinating about what a bad electronic instruments idea of a big, beautiful thing like that sounded like. So we'd have like, timpani, but it would sound completely weird and harp. So the intro for Dog Days, I wrote on that harp effect. Well, it's pretty simple for those of you that have heard it. It's just one note. I've run over again. It's no bait-hoven. But I try. And then, so we'd done all this stuff on the harp effect. And then one day, there was a guy walking past the studio with what looked like a telephone book, wrapped in a blanket. But it was a harp. And Iza got him in and put harp all over everything that we'd done.

4:45And that was Tom. And then because there was harp on everything, we had to have him in the band. So thank you, Tom, for coming with us. OK, so. Mass and Murphy asks, why don't you crowd surf anymore? Did you use the crowd surf a lot? Did this happen? I did. I'd say, right now, I do sort of crowd running. So it's fun. It's almost like a sort of, every day's a sports day. You have to run, see how far you can get to the back of the crowd. And then, how fast you can come back to the stage. But now we're playing like, I do love to crowd surf. But we're playing quite a lot of amphitheaters with people in chairs. And I don't think there's anything more awkward than a sort of thing. And sort of people in chairs and someone trying to crowd surf on them. It's not good look. It's like going to the library and jumping off a book show.

5:32That's awesome. Frederick, Ontario in Brazil. Look at that one. That's far away from what song was most difficult to write? Never let me go. Oh, come on. It's kind of a funny thing. Trix in the title, really. I couldn't really let it go. It went through so many different changes. And it became this gigantic sea monster with millions of legs. And there are so many ways it could go. And it's like trying to fit them all into one. It's like Pandora's Box. I was trying to get it all back in, all the different ideas. And then I just had, you lose track of it. And I just couldn't see what it was anymore. It actually took quite, I wasn't even going to put it on the album. And because, but my sister, my little sister Grace, loved it so much. And she persuaded me to. And she loved the original version.

6:20And so she persuaded me to put that on the album. There's another song. Because a lot of people ask this one. And the Florence and the Sheen Army made me ask this one. Do you ever plan to release the demo of Paper Master? Yeah. Everyone wants the song for some reason. It's about five seconds long. I think they want a full version of it though. I do like it. I was listening to it. It's quite good. Maybe I'll fix it up for fun. OK. Adriana Portion in Elk Polin says you've got a very unique style when it comes to clothing and accessories. Have you ever thought about establishing your own products line, jewelry or perfume? Products line. It's a product line. From that reaction you could probably tell. But it hasn't crossed my mind that far. Not so much. I don't know. I like clothes.

7:08But I haven't thought about it that much. A lot of the clothes I wear seem so sort of idiosyncratic to myself. I'm not sure who wants the Paisley waistcoat. Do you know what I mean? But if there's a market for them. There's a follow-up to that. I was interviewing Alanis Morissette this morning. You know her? I love her. She has a question for you. I thought you were starting. Yeah. If she's prefaced it with it's a shallow one, which you wanted to ask. I wanted to see her. She was playing in my hometown in Brixton Academy. And I was away, so I missed her. I wanted to see her so much. She was my absolute hero growing up. Not even Jaga Little Pildy. All the rest of the record had the whole back catalogue. I was like, oop. You're both drawn out? It's such an oop. Is she here? Maybe. I don't know if I should be answering that.

7:55Erm, why does she live? LAUGHTER Anyway. No, I was such a total uber fan growing up. So it's exciting that she's asking for you. Yeah, she's got a question. OK. Do you shop on your own? Or do you have a stylist with you? You have an amazing sense of style. I do a lot of shopping on my own. It's a funny thing. The areas where we go to find out antique shops and the vintage stores usually takes you to a nice part of town as well. So it's a good way to kind of, if you look for the vintage, or it's a good way, it's kind of scope out a city. I was thinking of even making like a little, we've been to some, we kind of know all the different places now in different cities. We should get a travel guide together or something. You can do that. But that's for another time. Well, my product line is out.

8:42LAUGHTER But yeah, so I do a lot of shopping on my own. And then I have a really lovely stylist called Aline Johnson, who helps get me outfits for the stage. And when I have to do big, scary things like the Oscars, because I couldn't deal with that by myself. What was that like? Let's talk about that. It was very surreal, but very exciting. And kind of one of those moments where you offered it, and you just think, well, when else might I get an opportunity to go? So I'm going to go. But yeah, it was the big dress and the carpet. And it was kind of, the red carpet was the kind of surreal bit. We didn't actually go in the, because I was performing. We were backstage a lot. I've seen a lot of the insides of dressing rooms, basically.

9:28That's the end? OK. LAUGHTER That was the Oscars. All right. Sarah Hall. I watched it basically on TV from the dressing room. Yeah. Underneath the Oscars. Sarah Hall in Queensland, Australia asks, what are your three most important goals for your personal life, and the three most important goals for your music career? Hello, Mum. LAUGHTER Oh, Mum chat. As soon as I walk through the door at home, no matter what time it is, I might have to even come back from lunch. She's just like, eat something and go to sleep. It's two in the afternoon. LAUGHTER I don't, that's quite a big question. I think it's funny when you're on tour, you almost have to. I'm still trying to move out of my mum's house.

10:13One, so far. I'm still... I mean, you never home, when are you home? Yeah, well, I've been on tour basically since I was 21, so I'm still sleeping on the mattress on the floor of my mum's house. I have found a house and very slowly moved. There's got no furniture in it, but I'm slowly moving into that, so that's a big life step. Yeah, absolutely. And... But on tour, you kind of live very much day to day. You know, you have to kind of... Time is in strange sections. You just have to... Each tour is like a two month block that you have to kind of get through. I don't think I'll really be able to think about that long goals until I kind of reached December and everything calms down. We've got to go soon, so we're going to do something called Five Question in a Second, but there was one question I wanted to get to about a third record, and where is it?

11:00Is there anything you would like from the new album to inherit from its predecessors? Have you started thinking about a third record? Okay, quite. It's funny, like the process of making a record, it's almost like you think about you sort of create it in your head before even doing anything, and it takes all these different forms, and I'm quite excited about it because I feel like in some ways I made the sound of lungs whole with ceremonial, so the ideas that I'd formulated, maybe, you know, with dog days in Cosmic Love, you then went on to embellish in ceremonial, and so now I feel like they've made quite a nice set, and that almost clears the slate for something, you know, the sound feels quite established now, so who knows where it could go? Cool, so we use something called Five Questions, Five Quick Questions, one word answers.

11:50Okay, it's going to get weird. Road or studio? You can't choose. If you're in the studio, you want to be in the road and advice first, sir. That loads of words, sir. Sorry, Leonard or McCartney? I know. I ask everyone these. Leonard. When you hear a song, it usually hits you first, Lyric's Melody or Rhythm? That's what it wants, really, isn't it? I think. For you? Sure. Song you've written your most proud of. It doesn't need to be one word. I think maybe at the moment, Breath of Life. Cool, and in one word, Florence and the Machine. Oh dear. Oh dear, that's a good one, I like that.

12:37You going to go with that? With Odeer? Yeah, might as well. Yeah, awesome, well, thank you very much. Florence, what?