"Cosmic Love" is the ninth track and sixth (seventh, counting the re-release of "Dog Days Are Over") single from Florence and the Machine’s debut album, Lungs.
The song was critically acclaimed, with many critics calling it the best song on the album, and was certified Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America.
This song is the personal favorite Lungs track of Florence Welch. She told The Sunday Times September 20, 2009 that she created it with her keyboard player, Isabella Summers, "in about half an hour with the worst hangover ever."
Background[]
Welch told The Sunday Times that it's a song about how being in love means "you give yourself up to the dark, to being blind."
Florence also described about its creation on the band’s webpage:
“Cosmic Love” was a joke title, but it stuck. The most hungover I’ve ever been when writing a song. I went to Isabella Summers’s studio after having been to a party, and I was lying on the floor wanting to vomit. We were working really hard on a song and just trying to make this sh*t piano part work, and all of a sudden I hit on one note, and I’d got it. We wrote the whole song in ten minutes”[1]
Paul Epworth recalled to Q magazine May 2010 of the first time he met Welch: "To be honest, I thought, 'Won't someone just nail her down?' She was going at two million mph, saying she wanted to make a tribal pagan pop record the whole time. But she's got a flair for invention that's rare. When she recorded Cosmic Love the words came when she was lying on the floor. Then she sang it and everyone in the studio was just crying. She's a great British eccentric, no doubt about it."
Lyrics[]
A falling star fell from your heart and landed in my eyes
I screamed aloud as it tore through them
And now it's left me blind
The stars, the moon
They have all been blown out
You've left me in the dark
No dawn, no day
I'm always in this twilight
In the shadow of your heart
And in the dark
I can hear your heartbeat
I tried to find the sound
But then it stopped
And I was in the darkness
So darkness I became
The stars, the moon
They have all been blown out
You've left me in the dark
No dawn, no day
I'm always in this twilight
In the shadow of your heart
I took the stars from my eyes and then I made a map
And knew that somehow I could find my way back
Then I heard your heart beating, you were in the darkness too
So I stayed in the darkness with you
The stars, the moon
They have all been blown out
You've left me in the dark
No dawn, no day
I'm always in this twilight
In the shadow of your heart
The stars, the moon
They have all been blown out
You've left me in the dark (you left me in the dark)
No dawn, no day
I'm always in this twilight
In the shadow of your heart
Music video[]
A promotional music video was shot on March 24, 2010. Welch's manager Mairead Nash described it as "amazing."[2] The video was debuted on the band's official website on May 11, 2010.[3]
Synopsis[]
The video begins with a shot of a lightbulb flashing. Lead singer Florence Welch is then seen to walk through some trees with autumn leaves, and a light falls into her eye, making her scream. The video then moves on to show Welch lying on the floor in a black outfit, in a mirrored room filled with different coloured lights around her. She then stands up and dances in the room. The video then moves back to Florence walking through the autumn leaves, with blue, green and purple lighting shining on her, and she appears to be lost as she is surveying her surroundings. The scene of Welch in the room of lights then changes to darker lighting, and her outfit changes into a white dress with lights. Later in the song, during this scene, leaves are seen to surround her as she is dancing. The video ends with Florence taking the light from inside her chest, and releasing it into the air, and it floats into the lightbulb which started the video.
Critical reception[]
"Cosmic Love" has been widely praised by music critics, with many critics calling it the best song on the album. Pitchfork says the song is "audaciously huge" and one of the album's "finest" tracks, alongside "Blinding".[4]
Chart performance[]
"Cosmic Love" debuted on the UK Singles Chart at number 162 on June 26, 2010 before climbing to number 116 the following week. On July 11, 2010, following the physical release of the single, it rocketed into the Top 100 at number 51, giving Florence her seventh Top 100 hit from the album Lungs. "Cosmic Love" is Florence's second least successful single in the UK charts behind "Drumming Song", along with "Kiss with a Fist", which also peaked at number 51. Conversely, the song is Florence and the Machine's highest-charting song in Ireland, as due to high digital sales it charted at number 3 there, almost a year before its physical release after it was featured in an advert for The O2 in Dublin.
Refrences[]
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20130528043442/http://www.florenceandthemachine.net/news/0-6/florence-on-lungs-part-two
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20100329014011/http://community.livejournal.com/ohnotheydidnt/45268820.html
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20120207144402/http://www.florenceandthemachine.net/video
- ↑ http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/13372-lungs/
