Florence and the Machine’s new album How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful — her first in three years — has not only won critical and commercial acclaim but was also recently nominated for a Mercury Prize. The ultimate heartbreak record, How Big’s tormented tropes come complete with visuals as arresting as the songs themselves. When creating the accompanying video for her latest single from the album, Delilah — in which she endures the tortuous wait for her love to phone — Florence enlisted director Vincent Haycock, whom she worked with on What Kind Of Man.
“This was one of the first songs Isa and I wrote for this record while we were at Geejam Studios in Jamaica. It’s based on a party we had just been to in Miami, the biblical tale of Sampson and Delilah. And the agony of the mobile phone in modern relationships,” says Welsh of the track. Haycock adds that the video is a sequel, of sorts, to the pair’s last outing: “Delilah is the turning point in the Odyssey. It’s basically Florence returning to the beginning of her journey. She’s been in Limbo and the transient motel in Hollywood represents the final layer. Without giving away the end of the Odyssey, Delilah ends with Florence confronting herself and then returning to the moment in the SUV before the car accident from What Kind of Man. She is now back in the real world, she’s regained her strength, and on her way to the end.”
Florence gives i-D a glimpse into the making of the video with this series of intimate portraits from the shoot itself. The video for Delilah is out today…
