- published: 26 Oct 2011
- views: 2891651
Ceremonials is the second studio album by English indie rock band Florence and the Machine, released on 28 October 2011 by Island Records. The band started working on the album in 2010 and finished it in 2011. The standard edition of the album was entirely produced by Paul Epworth, who also worked prominently on the band's debut album Lungs (2009).
The album received favourable reviews from music critics, who drew comparisons to artists such as Kate Bush, while also praising the instrumentation, Florence Welch's vocals and the production of the songs. It appeared on several year-end critics' lists in late 2011. At the 55th Annual Grammy Awards, the album received a nomination for Best Pop Vocal Album, while "Shake It Out" was nominated for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance. Ceremonials debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart, becoming the band's second consecutive number-one album. It also debuted at number one in Australia, Ireland and New Zealand, and peaked at number six on the US Billboard 200, becoming the band's first top-10 album in the United States.
[Florence]
And the heart is hard to translate,
It has a language of its own,
It talks and tongues and quiet sighs and prayers and proclamations,
In the grand days of great men and the smallest of gestures,
In short shallow gasps!
But with all my education,
I can’t seem to commend it,
And the words are all escaping me,
And coming back all damaged,
And I would put them back in poetry,
If I only knew how,
I can’t seem to understand it,
And I would give all this and heaven too,
I would give it all if only for a moment,
That I could just understand the meaning of the word you see,
‘Cause I’ve been scrawling it forever,
But it never makes sense to me at all.
And it talks to me in tiptoes,
And sings to me inside,
It cries out in the darkest night,
And breaks in morning light.
But with all my education,
I can’t seem to commend it,
And the words are all escaping,
And coming back all damaged,
And I would put them back in poetry,
If I only knew how,
I can’t seem to understand it,
And I would give all this and heaven too,
I would give it all if only for a moment,
That I could just understand the meaning of the word you see,
‘Cause I’ve been scrawling it forever,
But it never makes sense to me at all.
And I would give all this and heaven too,
I would give it all if only for a moment,
That I could just understand the meaning of the word you see,
‘Cause I’ve been scrawling it forever,
But it never makes sense to me at all.
No, words are a language,
It doesn’t deserve such treatment,
And all my stumbling phrases,
Never amounted to anything worth this feeling,
All this heaven,
Never could describe such a feeling as I’m having,
Words were never so useful,
So I was screaming out a language that I never knew existed before