Listen to Florence + The Machine’s powerful comeback track, ‘King’

Florence + The Machine have returned with a new song today (February 23) called ‘King’ – listen to it below.

It comes after the group spent the last few days teasing their return, promising fans that’s “something’s coming”.

The new song is described in a statement as a “meditation on womanhood, family, femininity and the subverting of expectations that makes a personal manifesto in transcending gender-defined roles into a cast-iron, crowd-searing festival-uniting call to arms.”

In the song, lead singer Florence Welch sings: “I am no mother, I am no bride – I am king”.

You can listen to the new song and watch its accompanying video, directed by Autumn de Wilde, below:

Speaking about the new track, Welch said: “As an artist, I never actually thought about my gender that much. I just got on with it. I was as good as the men and I just went out there and matched them every time.

“But now, thinking about being a woman in my 30s and the future…I suddenly feel this tearing of my identity and my desires. That to be a performer, but also to want a family might not be as simple for me as it is for my male counterparts.

“I had modelled myself almost exclusively on male performers, and for the first time I felt a wall come down between me and my idols as I have to make decisions they did not.”

The band last released new music in 2021 with the song ‘Call Me Cruella’ from the Disney film Cruella. In 2020 they also shared ‘Light Of Love’ which was originally meant to feature on their last album ‘High As Hope’, which came out in 2018.

Florence + The Machine are scheduled to perform live at a number of European festivals this summer, including Mad Cool in Madrid, Øya in Norway, and Finland’s Flow. 

Last year it was announced that Welch would write the score for a new Broadway adaption of The Great Gatsby.

The singer contributed to the all-star soundtrack for the 2013 film adaptation starring Leonardo DiCaprio with the song ‘Over the Love’.

“This book has haunted me for a large part of my life. It contains some of my favourite lines in literature,” Welch said in a statement.

“Musicals were my first love, and I feel a deep connection to Fitzgerald’s broken romanticism. It is an honour to have been offered the chance to recreate this book in song.”

The new musical will mark the singer’s first theatre project. She will co-write the score with musician Thomas Bartlett, who produced the Oscar-nominated ‘Mystery of Love’ from the 2017 film ‘Call Me By Your Name’.