The Pagan Heart of Florence + The Machine

In Florence + The Machine’s 2025 album Everybody Scream, the track “Witch Dance” describes a group of women in a clearing who tell the narrator, “We’ve been waiting, waiting to meet you, it’s only a matter of time.” Another song, “Perfume and Milk,” recounts the cycle of seasons through decay and renewal and contains the lyric “prayer is a spell.” The words to “The Old Religion” yearn for some kind of release—“it’s the old religion humming in your veins”—and the title track contains Dionysian imagery such as shaking gold “like a tambourine” and “a bouquet of brambles, all twisted and tangled.” These are but a few examples of the pagan-inspired imagery and references contained in the new album.

The sixth full-length effort of the band, Everybody Scream is in line with the tropes inspired by paganism, magic, mythology, and folklore that have been a mainstay of Florence + The Machine’s artistry since their debut. As early as the 2009 Glastonbury Festival, Florence Welch appeared onstage “present[ing] as a Pre-Raphaelite vision draped in black chiffon and roses,” as Erin Sweeney Smith writes in Popular Music. Smith’s article investigates both the sounds as well as the visual and verbal signifiers that contribute to the associations with magic and paganism in Florence + The Machine’s productions.

Welch’s pagan imagery, Smith illustrates, is in line with the popularity of Wicca or witchcraft, which has flourished since its introduction in the 1950s, and the type of paganism that emerged in the 1970s as part of the rise of environmentalism and second-wave feminism. In this context, paganism is defined by scholar T. M. Luhrmann as a loose title for people who practice a nature-oriented religion that usually involves magic, while what we define as “modern magic” combines influences from nature-based paganism, astrology, mysticism, a range of alternative therapies, and even Kabbalism.

Early Florence + The Machine tracks such as “Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)” (2009), “Dog Days Are Over” (2009), and “No Light, No Light” (2011) all contain implicit or explicit pagan and magical elements through verbal and visual signifiers. “Rabbit Heart” cites the myth of King Midas and sacrifice-related imagery in the line “Who is the lamb and who is the knife,” and the phrase “raise it up” also alludes to ritual practices. Smith writes,

Pagan listeners’ adoption and interpretation of “Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)” as a pagan anthem probably derives from these lyrics and the recording’s mix. The harp remains one of the most distinctive elements of Florence + The Machine’s sound and stage show, and the mix features prominent use of this instrument. The harp has the potential to carry resonance among even non-pagan listeners as an instrument evoking the ancient past.

In the case of “Dog Days Are Over,” one of the band’s most mainstream songs and a gateway for many into their discography, the paganism comes through in the music video, where Welch alternates between a high-fashion character and a pagan-like persona clad in fur and ribbons, with black paint around her eyes and a body often shrouded in smoke. She then appears at the center of the final tableau, framed by two harpists, wearing face paint around her eyes and a kimono-style dress. “Dog Days Are Over featured three versions of femininity as if Welch was a youthful triple goddess,” writes Smith.

The use of pagan imagery is not always well pondered or culturally aware. Take the case of “No Light, No Light,” part of Florence + The Machine’s sophomore album Ceremonials, which follows the album’s examination of both paganism and the “darker” side of Christianity via ghosts, demons, devils, and secret ceremonials. In this track, the album’s themes come through via the juxtaposition of organ, harp, and tom, and with imagery referencing the church and Voodoo. In the video, directed by Icelandic duo Arni & Kinski, both the Christian and magical “Voodoo” spaces portrayed are defined through darkness and shadow. “In this video, magic simultaneously seeks to fascinate and to repel the viewer through a safe haven of the white choirboys’ white magic against the terror of a black magician/black man,” writes Smith.

Florence Welch’s self-presentation follows the archetype of the pagan priestess that goes beyond the maiden/mother/crone characterization. Welch embodies, per Smith, “the beautiful and powerful formulation of the witch as youthful ‘superwoman’ attributable to rock star status,” where “dress, makeup, and instrumentation all strengthen a performative version of femaleness relying on traditional markers of femininity.” This, Smith continues, emerges via contrast: her distinctive long red hair, jewelry, and flowing dresses offset her strong bone structure and non-classical, striking features.

And while the depth of the pagan references employed by Welch and her band varies, the nods to paganism in her early work mirror what was happening in countercultural spaces in the late 1960s and early 1970s. When Lungs came out in 2009, the political and social concerns of the time “triggered fears similar to those of participants in the 1960s and 1970s counterculture who feared for the environment and the fate of humanity,” reasons Smith. “Small wonder that many listeners were drawn towards escapist pagan imagery and magic- or fantasy-related music in the face of environmental, political, and economic crisis.”

To get the pulse of this, Smith investigates forums such as Reddit, showing how paganism-themed subreddits and redditors resonate with Welch’s music. “Emphasising the utility of a Florence + The Machine track, user Portblack noted that ‘Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)’ from Lungs provided a good selection for pagan purposes. User nogoldenapples seconded this statement by asserting the track was on their Ostara (a pagan holiday) playlist. One user, whose account was deleted but whose comment remained, confessed, ‘Florence + The Machine’s music is intensely spiritual for me. I play it a lot before my personal rituals.’”

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