Is florence and the machine gay
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It also, occasionally, feels like a protest record—self-love and love for the larger body politic are braided together in songs like “June” and “100 Years.” The music sighs and still bites, but it’s ruminations feel like progress in a greater project of redemption. She is not a lesbian. Florence said she identifies as being straight, but she likes kissing girls however she wouldn’t be in a relationship with one.
On June 12, 2016, 29-year-old Omar Mateen shot and killed 49 people and wounded 53 more in a mass shooting at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, United States before Orlando Police officers fatally shot him after a three-hour standoff. I knew I was gay, but I didn’t know yet how to fold that fact into the larger scheme of my life; a consummate nerd, I drew wizards in notebook margins and read fantasy books and binged on my sisters’ Buffy DVD box sets.
The song Girl With One Eye is not an original of theirs. Maybe not, but Welch continues a long tradition of mystical women—many cis and straight, but not all—that have queered the pop culture space (in the more literal sense of the word) with their uniquely witchy powers. By then, I had taken time off from school and returned. This was all done out of genuine interest, sure, but some reflection (and some therapy tbh) have given those tween years a kind of tragic patina: leaving middle school and junior high behind, I didn’t realize just how dissatisfied I was with reality or uncomfortable I was in my uniformly straight and cis surroundings.
I had chased after straight boys (it was a tiny liberal arts college, don’t @ me) and started eating my vegetables.
The album title is taken from a poem Welch wrote after wandering through New York City with a friend: “Heady with pagan worship/of water towers/fire escapes, ever reaching/high as hope.” June is celebrated as LGBTQ+ Pride Month, a time to recognize the impact of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals on history and to celebrate the LGBTQ+ community.
Welch has dyspraxia (a developmental coordination disorder) and dyslexia (a learning disorder that affects the way you process things) and having both dyslexia and dyspraxia can present unique challenges.
The show was ending and I had started to crack
Woke up in Chicago and the sky turned black
And you’re so high, you’re so high, you had to be an angel
And I’m so high, I’m so high, I can see an angel
I hear your heart beating in your chest
The world slows ‘till there’s nothing left
Skyscrapers look on like great, unblinking giants (oh)
In those heavy days in June
When love became an act of defiance
Hold onto each other
Hold onto each other
Hold onto each other
Hold onto each other
You were broken-hearted and the world was, too
And I was beginning to lose my grip
And I have always held it loosely
But this time I admit
I felt it really start to slip
And choir singing in the street
And I will come to you
To watch the television screen
In your hotel room
Always down to hide with you
Hold onto each other
Hold onto each other
Hold onto each other
Hold onto each other
You’re so high, you’re so high
You’re so high, you’re so high
You’re so high, you’re so high
You had to be an angel
I’m so high, I’m so high
I’m so high, I’m so high
I’m so high, I’m so high
I can see an angel
Written for Glyn’s Mixed Music Bag 2025 Week #22, Month of June part 1 where we need to find a song where either the title or a line in it features the current month.
The first time I heard a Florence and the Machine song, I was a sweaty, closeted teenager in a hot car, casually getting every cell in my body rearranged by a voice.
It was the summer of 2008, I think.
The song Girl With One Eye, has such lyrics as "I slipped my hand under her skirt, I said don't worry it's not gonna hurt." This would make you think otherwise. And despite the seeming disconnection of consuming music in the modern age, I still like to think that Welch came into my life and gave me, in the words of Kenneth Burke, “equipment for living.” An uncanny map to navigate those first years outside the closet, a silver key to get there.
Some people see this song as being a soft, LGBTQ anthem, as this tragedy occurred during Florence + the Machine’s 2016 tour. It was layered under DIY, White Stripes-esque production but still gave off a subversive British cool, which seemed like the complete opposite of whatever I was giving off at the time. The spells don’t dazzle and redirect your attention away from Welch’s life; they turn inward instead, illuminating their caster.
Being a queer consumer of culture, I wonder now: is there anything uniquely queer about escaping real life, if not redeeming it, with art?
Welch first used the name during a teenage collaboration with her younger sister’s babysitter, Isabella “Machine” Summers. It’s a face the culture has seen before, and that’s probably why it’s easier for me to find something compelling in its likeness. “Tonight I’m gonna bury that horse in the ground.” I listened to it on the way to a campus hook-up, and I listened to it again a year later, walking home after the same boy said I was getting fat.