Born on August 28: Florence Welch, a complex, disturbing and slightly anxious machine

She was born in 1986 in the London borough of Camberwell and some see her as a distant cousin of Kate Bush.

It would be wrong to believe that success completely erases life's ups and downs. At most, it blurs them. In an often epic, even grandiloquent repertoire, English singer Florence Welch reveals, in bits and pieces, a life as bumpy as most of us. This is part of what makes her so touching. With her fourth album, "High As Hope," released in 2018, this ball of anxiety (as she sometimes describes herself) no longer hesitates to dissect her personal anxieties, to consider the future of our planet, and even to question her own aging.

In 2023, upon the release of "Dance Fever," Florence told Rolling Stone magazine: "My way of making sense of the world is to transform it into myth and fable. To transform people and things into characters... That's how I deal with everything." She is obviously aware that the fantasised image that her audience perceives of her is, in the same vein, very far from her own daily reality. Indeed, when we see her twirling on stage, it is hard to imagine that she considers herself agoraphobic. Formerly diagnosed as dyslexic, the English author has always retained and maintained a passion for words, myths and literature. Not inclined to take the easy way out, she likes nothing less than to elevate the subject. Thus, her latest album "Dance Fever" makes no reference to the Bee Gees, nor to any kind of Saturday Night Fever. On the contrary, even if it is not the only common thread, the album refers to a mysterious dance epidemic in the Middle Ages (which has also been called the "dancing plague"). In 1374, in dozens of medieval towns along the Rhine, hundreds of people were seized by irrepressible dancing convulsions, not even stopping to drink or eat. No serious scientific explanation has ever been found to understand this phenomenon, which was repeated in other parts of Europe. Except that it was undoubtedly an outlet for the anxieties of the time. This is a good thing because Florence sees dance as a liberating ritual...

(MH with Stéphane Soupart - Photo : Etienne Tordoir)

Photo: Florence Welch of Florence + The Machine at the TW Classic Festival in Werchter, Belgium, on June 25, 2022