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Florence Welch has never been one to hold her... her voice. After three turbulent years away, the Florence + the Machine frontwoman has returned swinging, and this time she’s training her sights on a familiar face in British pop. On Everybody Scream, her first album since 2022, Welch drops a line that’s already set the internet ablaze: “Listening to a song by The 1975, I thought, ‘Fuck it, I might as well give music by men a try.’” That reference - nestled in the track Music by Men - relates to the band of Matty Healy, who infamously dated her pal Taylor Swift in a whirlwind 2023 romance and break-up, is perhaps perhaps the most divisive men in pop. From on-stage controversies to a podcast appearance that sparked allegations of racism and misogyny, Healy’s name has become shorthand for the industry’s most self-referential chaos. So when Welch, who is close friends with Swift - both have publicly supported each other and collaborated on the song Florida for the The Tortured Poets Department album - name-checks his band, it’s hard not to read it as more than just a throwaway line. It’s a shot across the glitter-strewn battlefield - a wry, exhausted eye-roll at male-dominated rock culture and its endless second chances. The lyric comes wrapped in Welch’s trademark grandeur, a mix of fire and theatre that’s long set her apart. But this one cuts sharper. Welch also appeared on Swift’s 2016 album 1989 (Deluxe) tracklist as an influence, and Swift once called her “one of the most powerful performers alive.” That kinship makes the lyric’s target all the more intriguing. In a single breath she skewers the kind of self-serious, guitar-wielding masculinity that still defines much of the rock canon. The jab lands, especially against a backdrop where her peers - from The Last Dinner Party to Paris Paloma - are redrawing the map for women in alternative music. There’s another layer, of course. Welch and Swift have long moved in similar circles: both ethereal frontwomen who turned vulnerability into spectacle, both adored for blurring art and emotion. Still, for all the side-eye, this is not just a gossip exercise. Everybody Scream has been hailed as a triumphant return. The Evening Standard’s own Martin Robinson awarded it five stars, calling it “an epic reassertion of Florence’s fearsome, spell-binding power.” It’s not the first time Welch has gone after so-called male mediocrity. Elsewhere on Everybody Scream, she sneers, “It must be nice to be a man and make boring music just because you can,” before dryly calling her supposed rival “my second-favourite frontman.” The message? The rock pantheon is long overdue a reshuffle, and she’s happy to help with the demolition. If Everybody Scream is her resurrection, Music by Men is her exorcism... a tongue-in-cheek purge of every leather-jacketed ego she’s had to out-sing to get here. And in dropping The 1975’s name, she’s done what few can: turned a throwaway pop lyric into a cultural moment.
