Florence + The Machine: Ceremonials

Following the success of their first album ‘Lungs’, UK indie sensation Florence + The Machine released their sophomore album ‘Ceremonials’. In the days surrounding the release, lead singer, Florence Welch aka Flo, was seemingly in a million places at once promoting the release, appearing on The X Factor, conducting a YouTube Q&A and a Clash magazine interview, to name a few.

The album’s success can already be forecasted from the first single entitled “What The Water Gave Me”. The single reveals that the success from their prior album has not gotten to their heads. Both the single and album alike hold true to her style of unstoppable hooks and hard-hitting choruses that seemingly soar in the audio stratosphere.

In comparison to Lungs, which was a prolonged project of a few years, Welch stated that the album came together rather quickly. She described the Ceremonials as a small stamp of her creative time. After being approached by many producers which presented new visions for Florence + The Machine, she pinpointed her success to “sticking to her guns”.

In sticking to her guns, the album reveals powerful emotional inspiration. Florence draws her inspiration from literature, paintings and folk tales with a flare of London’s Gothic era.

As for the albums title, MTV News conducted an interview with Florence. She stated "It was an art installation done in the '70s, this video piece all done on Super 8, this big procession of kind of coquette-style hippies and all these different colored robes and masks, and it was all to do with color, really saturated, brightly colored pastas and balloons," Welch explained. "I saw it a couple years ago, and it was called 'Ceremonials' and then, like, Roman numerals after it. And the word sort of stuck with me, and I think the whole idea of performance, and kind of putting on this outfit and going out almost to find some sort of exorcism or absolution, to kind of get outside yourself, there's a sense of ceremony to it."

 

On August 23^rd, VEVO, in partnership with Florence, released a video for the first single. In only two days, the video received 1.5 million views, far exceeding expectations. As of today, the video has 4.3 million views.

As of Nov 7^th, BBC released that ‘Ceremonials’ has skyrocketed to #1 on the UK charts. In the first week, it was reported that the album sold over 90,000 copies. ‘Lungs’, their first album, reached #1 as well but was on the chart for several weeks before doing so.