Following last month’s “King,” Florence + The Machine are back with “Heaven Is Here,” the second single off their forthcoming fifth album. The mystical stomper is the first song that frontwoman Florence Welch wrote during the COVID-19 lockdown, when she didn’t have access to recording studios, and she was definitely thinking big.
“I wanted to make something monstrous,” Welch said in a statement. “And this clamor of joy, fury, and grief was the first thing that came out. With dance studios also shut, it was my dream to one day create choreography with it. So it’s one of the first pieces of music I have made specifically with contemporary dance in mind.”
Florence produced the song alongside Jack Antonoff, Kid Harpoon, and Glass Animals lead singer Dave Bayley. Welch’s urgent, empowering, vaguely sinister lyrics are propelled by restless handclaps and clattering percussion, as well as piano and acoustic guitar.
Welch is on record as having started a witch coven as a middle schooler, and the song’s opening verse finds her ready to cast some spells.
Oh, bring your salt, bring your cigarette
Draw me a circle and I’ll protect
Heaven is here if you want it
She sounds almost biblical on the third verse, which includes some of her trademark water imagery.
And all of the fish, let them flounder
I went to the water, drank every drop
I’ll turn your sea to a desert
In the fourth and final verse, Welch paints herself as a glammy force of nature, or maybe supernature.
More catholic taste than the Devil
All gilded and golden, yes, I’m your girl
Hell, if it glitters, I’m going
Welch continues in this vein on the bridge, where she plays with the traditionally masculine image of the cowboy or Canadian Mountie.
And I ride in my red dress
And time stretches endless
With my gun in my hand
You know I always get my man
The “Heaven Is Here” music video, directed by Autumn de Wilde, features a pair of dancers who are “currently sheltering” in Ukraine, according to Welch. “[T]o my brave and beautiful sisters Marine and Nastia—I love you,” Welch said in her statement. “I wish I could put my arms around you.”
You can check out all the lyrics to “Heaven Is Here” on Genius now.
