"I never knew my killer would be coming from within"
A dive into King by Florence + The Machine.
I was anticipating Florence + The Machine’s 5th studio album ever since i became obsessed with their Tiny Desk concert back in 2020. I had listened up until this year 3 of their albums and i must say, even if didn’t like the production on some of her songs, i was always taken aback by Florence’s vocal capacity and her brilliant lyricism.
I knew an album was coming this year. I didn’t have any confirmation from Florence herself to back up that pulsating feeling but something told me i’d have brand new music from the band in 2022, so i was not surprised when she announced a new single called “King” that dropped on February 23.
It was 11am, i was about to start one of my classes and i put on my headphones to listen to the song. I pressed play and i immediately knew i was in the presence of what might’ve been my favorite song by the band without a doubt.
I had been paying attention to every component that made this song great but i recently found out i was misinterpreting the lyrics. Which of course lead me into listening to the song an unhealthy amount of times figuring out why did i resonate so much with it not even knowing its proper meaning. That’s why i decided to do this breakdown. So, let’s dive in!
The song starts with a discussion:
“We argue in the kitchen about whether to have children”
Throughout this song there’s two significant components: Gender and art. Florence explores these things with subtlety sometimes but here we can see 2 elements that society associates with “being a woman”: the kitchen and having children. She was defying those expectations by making one of these things her choice. Florence has been praised because of her extensive and large artistry and a voice that´s defiant and immense, but first and foremost she’s been cornered to being “a woman who makes pop music”. Which is what she’s exploring here: What means to be a woman who makes art.
The conversation takes a turn. “And the scale of my ambition and how much is art really worth? The very thing you’re best at is the thing that hurts the most”. As a writer, i’ve asked this question several times. Is the pain of venting and ranting through words, rhymes and metaphors worth it? I don’t even think this is the only component of being an artist that hurts Florence. Choosing this path means dealing with fame, absence on every relationship you’ve decided to build upon, your ego and so many much things that lead her into questioning: Is my ambition and art what’s keeping me from experience peace?
On an interview with NPR, Florence explained these lines:
“It just seems like that’s the summation of my life. And also the conflict of being in a nontraditional role. It’s the stuff that I just never thought about going in as a young woman into making music. It wasn’t like these fears about what am I sacrificing or what other avenues am I missing out on by doggedly pursuing the thing that I’ve loved the most.”
She wrote this song when she was completely blocked artistically. It makes sense that this was the result of her studio session with Jack Antonoff on New York before the pandemic started.
We have not spoke about the title of the song. A king is a figure that represents sovereignty, divinity and authority. Queens are often associated with authority but the adjectives used to describe them have more to do with who they were as women, them being “regal” and “elegant”. These words used to describe the head of a realm and the biggest authority imposed by god are extremely affected by their gender. Their perception, details about their lives and lifestyle are extremely bound to them being either a man or a woman. Florence throughout the song is exposing her desire to be perceived as a “king”, not as a mother or a bride. We see her owning her narrative and letting everyone know that is her choice to be who she is and it’ll be her own choice to grow into who she wants to be.
She explicitly displays why is this her aspiration on the end of the first verse and the pre-chorus:
“But you need your rotten heart, your dazzling pain like diamond rings. You need to go to war to find material to sing”.
Being a sovereign is a responsibility that in every form makes you the most important human of whichever kingdom you’re the leader of. In some way, you’re not longer representing a group of people that lives in a determined territory, you are the kingdom. Every choice and desire you have, every step you make and every mistake you shall take during your reign is history. An statement.
The thing about accumulating this amount of power is that you’ll constantly seek for more. A piece of land isn’t enough. Neither are fame, gold or subordinates. You’re always seeking for that legacy that’ll outlive you.
These lines describe what Florence encapsulates of what being “king” means, which serves as a metaphor for being an artist too. Every decision you take will be set to verse, every mistake, every fall, every heartbreak. Notice how thanks to this your heart rottens but your pain dazzles and outshines everything else in the room. You’re hurting because of those diamond rings, those wars you’ve fought to let you make your sorrow shine through melodies.
“ I need my golden crown of sorrow, my bloody sword to swing. My empty halls to echo with grand self-mythology”
She seems to cope with that pain that drains her with the only thing she knows how to do and that frustrates her. A crown is supposed to be indicative of power and she definitely is conscious of the role she plays as someone that could captivate hearts. This reminds me of a few lines from the song Paprika by Japenese Breakfast:
How’s it feel to stand at the height of your powers
To captivate every heart?
Projеcting your visions to strangers
Who feel it, who listen to linger on еvery word
We also see how Michelle-Lead singer and main lyricist of the song- finishes the chorus of this track with “But alone, it feels lie dying. All alone, i feel so much”. That’s exactly what Florence is saying here. That grand self-mythology is mythical and legendary but that comes with a price: Emptiness.
Florence wants to be able to choose that. Male singers get to be empty, to express sorrow and pain with low to no criticism compared to what a woman who sings about those same things does. Men get praised because they’ve lived a wild life, with no remorses and responsibilities that ties them to stability. Women need to fit these traditional roles that society imposes them or else they’re “lonely, sad and mentally unstable”.
This is what she expands about on the second verse:
“But a woman is changeling, always shifting shape. Just when you think you have it figured out something new begins to take”.
A changeling is a noun often used to describe a traitor or a magical creature that was once a fairy child but transformed into a human child. This ties up with the concept of being a king. Alliances are still extremely vulnerable because States are rational actors. They´re constantly evaluating what could exponentiate the profits of keeping relations with another State. Since kings are the head of the State, based on their personal interests they’ve historically shifted their objectives and as a consequence, their relations with different actors of the international system.
Women have been conventionally condemned because of this. We see the pressure they put into pregnant women by telling them they have to “keep their shape”, how women in science were treated like “witches” and being killed because of it. The different aspects of what a woman is and should be to our society boxes them into becoming “traitors” because they do not keep up with those expectations.
Florence is taking a word that’s been used in a derogatory way majority of the time to make it positive. Change is part of womanhood and she’s embracing her growing up with every stage of what life has waiting for her.
Also, taking in this idea of being a fraud because of her constant battle trying to fit as a human and as an artist brought her to lose herself in the midst of all the noise. According to Genius “She must swap between the two- her personal life and the artist´s life- but just when she settles with one, she is confronted with new challenges that force her in the other direction. She is, in other words, describing a kind of imposter syndrome”.
“What strange claws are these scratching at my skin? I never knew my killer would be coming from within”.
This is probably my favorite lyric of the entire song. It´s a double entendre that takes on what giving birth to a child is to Florence. She speaks about it with fear in her heart because it’s a concept she’s completely foreign with. But it’s also about Florence as an artist, knowing that having those words coming from her soul, putting them on paper and turning them into song is her biggest cause of pain brings not only confusion to her but frustration too. Her self doubt has brought her to not knowing herself anymore. She’s afraid of what her body and mind might be able to do thanks to the amount of pain that art can make her feel.
We need to talk about the performance in the song too. It’s creepy, quiet and full of dread. She’s not only singing these lines, she’s performing them on stage. You can picture every line and word very clearly. After the repetition of the chorus for a third time, the tone of the song shifts completely. The dark, eery and hushed style that we’ve heard so far gets shaken by the roaring belt of Florence on the bridge. Everything we’ve taken from the song, the personal details and rant that Florence has put onto every lyric ties up in a cathartic way.
There’s a new bright and hopeful turn to the song that releases the tension that’s been building up from the beginning. And as we finish, Florence gives closure to this chapter with some lines:
“And i was never as good as i always thought i was but i knew how to dress it up. I was never satisfied, it never let me go. Just dragged me by my hair and back with the show”.
We’re back to that killer that lives within her. She´s been able to hide that pain for the longest time but she´s speaking about it from the present because it’s where she is right now. Her narrating these lines looking back makes the ending of this story perfect. She’s now accepting what she went through and her mind is set to healing now.
This is my favorite song of the year so far and it’s very personal to me. It challenged me to see art with a different perspective, to choose my own narrative and understanding i can take control of my moments of creative outburst instead of surrendering to them.
Would love to hear your thoughts on this song! If you have a different perspective on any of the lyrics i’m very interested on hearing them. Thank you for reading! See you on the next one :)
I loveeee reading you talk about music! Especially Florence !!! Keep it up ❤️