Florence + The Machine Grapples With Love & Loneliness On “Hunger”

Mike Wass | May 3, 2018 3:50 pm
Florence + The Machine's 'Sky Full Of Song'
Flo & Co. return with the typically stunning ballad 'Sky Full Of Song.'

This has been a banner week for pop music with Christina Aguilera, Celine Dion, Shawn Mendes, Troye Sivan and LSD (a new supergroup featuring Labrinth, Sia & Diplo) dropping new singles. Florence + The Machine is a late addition to the mix, but “Hunger” just might be the best of the bunch. The lead single from High As Hope is a soaring anthem with the kind of effortless pop sensibility that informed Lungs and Ceremonials, before things went more alt on 2015’s How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful.

It also has guts and heart, unfolding more like a poem than your typical pop song. “At seventeen I started to starve myself, I thought that love was a kind of emptiness,” Florence begins. “And at least I understood then the hunger I felt and I didn’t have to call it loneliness.” That eventually leads up to the stadium-rock chorus. “We all have a hunger” x 4. If radio plays along, this could be a very big song. The group also announced June 29 as the release date of High As Hope.

The album boasts production from Emile Haynie, Kamasi Washington, Sampha, Tobias Jesso Jr, Kelsey Lu and Jamie xx and is described as both intimate and epic in sound. As for subject matter, there’s a tribute to Patti Smith and a song about being ghosted on text. “It’s always a work in progress, and I definitely don’t have everything figured out,” the flame-haired lead singer says of the LP. “But this feels like quite a pure expression of who I am now, as an artist, and an honest one. I’m just more comfortable with who I am.” Listen to “Hunger” and see the tracklist below.

Florence + the Machine’s High As Hope:

1. June

2. Hunger

3. South London Forever

4. Big God

5. Sky Full of Song

6. Grace

7. Patricia

8. 100 Years

9. The End of Love

10. No Choir

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