Florence and the Machine “Witch Dance”
“Witch Dance” was written about Florence Welch’s experience of nearly dying as a result of an ectopic pregnancy. “The closest I came to death was trying to make life, and you don’t get that without desire,” she told Zane Lowe on Apple Music. The song tangles sex and death into knots, starting with an opening scene in which she’s fucking the personification of death, whose “blackberry mouth” tastes like life. Welch has been exploring themes of desire, faith, and nature through her entire career but she’s rarely been so lascivious and primal. The lyrics play out like a dark fairytale, but she keeps the song grounded in equal measures of lust and...