Formation and Early History
The name of Florence and the Machine is attributed to Florence Welch's teenage collaboration with Isabella "Machine" Summers. Welch and Summers performed together for a time under the name Florence Robot/Isa Machine. According to Welch, The name Florence and the Machine started off as a private joke that got out of hand. I made music with my friend, who we called Isabella Machine to which I was Florence Robot. When I was about an hour away from my first gig, I still didn't have a name, so I thought 'Okay I'll be Florence Robot/Isa Machine' The band's debut album, Lungs was released on 6 July, 2009 and held the number-two position for it's first five weeks on the UK Albums Chart. Florence and the Machine's sound has been described as a combination of various genres, including rock and soul. Florence and the Machine has been nominated for six Grammy Awards.
Family and Early Life
Florence Leontine Mary Welch was born in Camberwell, London on 28 August 1986 to parents Nick Russell Welch, an advertising executiv and Evelyn Welch (née Samuels), an American immigrant from New York Cit who was educated at Harvard University and the Warburg Institute, University of London Evelyn is currently Professor of Renaissance Studies, Provost, and Senior Vice President (Arts & Sciences) at King's College London. Through her mother, Welch has both British and American citizenship. Welch is the niece of satirist Craig Brow via Brown's wife and Welch's aunt, Frances Welch, and granddaughter of Colin Welch (James Colin Ross Welch), former deputy editor of The Daily Telegraph and former Daily Mail parliamentary sketchwriter, originally of Cambridgeshire. Welch's maternal uncle is actor and director John Stockwell.During her youth, Welch was encouraged by her Scottish paternal grandmother, Cybil Welch (née Russell), to pursue her performing and singing talents. Welch's deceased grandmothers inspired numerous songs on Florence and the Machine's debut album Lungs. Welch also sang at family weddings and funerals.Welch's parents divorced when she was thirteen, and her mother eventually married their next-door neighbour, Professor Peter Openshaw. Around this time, her maternal grandmother, who had bipolar disorder, died by suicide. In Florence and the Machine's 2018 single Hunger, she opened up for the first time about a teenage eating disorder. She's also spoken of being a highly imaginative and fearful child. "I learned ways to manage that terror – drink, drugs, controlling food..."Welch was educated at Thomas's London Day School then went on to Alleyn's School, South East London, where she did well academically. However, Welch often got in trouble in school for impromptu singing and for singing too loudly in the school's choir. Despite an early love of reading and literature, she was also diagnosed with mild dyslexia due to problems with spelling, alongside dyspraxia, a developmental coordination disorder that doesn't affect her reading ability, but caused issues with organization. Music and books gave her reprieve from what she felt made her different from others. "I used reading as a form of escape. I was shy and sensitive, and so reading gave me a safe space." Upon leaving secondary school and "just bumming around Camberwell where I lived, working at a bar and thought that I should start doing something with life", Welch studied at Camberwell College of Arts before dropping out to focus on her music Initially, she had intended to take a year out from her studies to "see where the music would go and then it started going somewhere so [she] never went back".
Influences
During interviews, Welch has cited singers Grace Slick, Alanis Morissette and Stevie Nicks as influences and "heroes." She told Rolling Stone in 2010, “I’m pretty obsessed with [Stevie] Nicks, from her style to her voice. I like watching her on YouTube and her old performances, the way she moves and everything.”She has also listed in her early influences the likes of John Cale, Otis Redding, Siouxsie, David Byrne and Lou Reed. In a review of Ceremonials, Jody Rosen of Rolling Stone described Florence and the Machine's style as "dark, robust and romantic", deeming the ballad "Only If for a Night" as a mix of "classic soul and midnight-on-the-moors English art rock". Welch stated that her lyrics related to Renaissance artists : "We're dealing with all of the same things they did: love and death, time and pain, heaven and hell". Welch has used religious imagery in her music and performances, though she has stated, "I'm not a religious person. Sex, violence, love, death, are the topics that I'm constantly wrestling with, it's all connected back to religion."Nick Welch, her father, contributed a "rock and roll element to the family mix"; in his twenties, he lived in a West End squat and attended the Squatters' Ball organised by Heathcote Williams where The 101ers played regularly. A self-confessed "frustrated performer", if Nick, as he put it, "nudged Flo in any way, it's only been to listen to the Ramones rather than Green Day." Evelyn, Welch's mother, had an equally strong, yet completely different influence on her daughter. A visit to one of her mother's renaissance lectures left teenage Florence deeply impressed. She explained, "I aspire to something like that, but with music. I hope that my music has some of the big themes—sex, death, love, violence—that will still be part of the human story in 200 years' time."
Image
Welch is known for her distinctive clothing style, often performing concerts wearing light Gucci dresses, barefoot and without jewellery. Vogue described her style as Bohemian and called her "the queen of Bohemian style."When discussing her fashion style, Welch said that, "For the stage, it's The Lady of Shalott meets Ophelia...mixed with scary gothic bat lady. But in real life I'm kind of prim." Welch often mixes artistic influences both in her fashion style and music, with a strong nod towards the style of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. 2011 saw Gucci dressing her for her summer tour and a performance at the Chanel runway show at Paris Fashion Week. Welch describes 1970s American drag queen troupe The Cockettes and French chanson singer Françoise Hardy as fashion mentors.
Personal Life
Welch considers herself an introvert, and is passionate about reading and literature. She has held many events with her fan-run book club, Between Two Books. "It’s a huge generalization to say that all readers are introverts; I'm sure there's a lot of extroverted bookworms out there, but, for me, it's nice to know people of similar inclinations can actually come together in a social way and talk about something that is inherently solitary."Although many of her songs contain religious themes and elements, Welch has said she does not follow any particular religion. "I went to Catholic school, and the first songs I remember liking were hymns. I find it's nice to mix the mundane and the magical, the irrelevant with the huge themes. Sex, love, death, marriage, guilt—mix that with seeing a huge sky or going for a walk or turning the page of a book. Living is dealing with the everyday and the notion that you're going to die."Welch has been open about her struggles with anxiety and depression, as well as with alcohol. Many of her songs reflect these issues.In 2015, Welch broke her foot after leaping off the stage at the Coachella Festival. She revealed that she used to drink alcohol before every performance, telling Billboard: "I'm quite shy, really—that's probably why I used to drink a lot. But I don't anymore. When I finally took time off to make this new record, I had time to strengthen. And when I was coming back into the fray, I really didn't want to lose that. I thought I could go dive-bomb back into it, but look what happened. I dived into it and literally broke myself."In 2016, Welch voiced her support for Remain during the EU referendum on that issue. Welch is also a vocal advocate for LGBT rights, and regularly waves the rainbow flag at her concerts, particularly during her song "Spectrum (Say My Name)". In 2019, Welch expressed her support for women's rights during concerts in Las Vegas, Nevada, Chicago, Illinois, Raleigh and Columbia, Maryland. She encouraged her audience to donate to the ACLU instead of buying concert merchandise. In 2018, she tweeted her support for the removal of the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland. The removal passed and legalised abortion access within the country.