Bill Wolff:
“Welcome back to Protest Anthems the podcast about all things music, protest and social justice. In this episode Erin will be talking about the song Hunger by Florence + the Machine. This song is a tribute to the correlation of love, eating disorders, drug addiction and self-worth. In today’s society eating disorders are becoming more prevalent and they need to be discussed and made aware of. Join Erin as we all try to understand the hunger that we all have.”
*Instrumental music*
Tape – Hunger Studio Version – Lyrics:
“Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh
Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh
Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh
Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh
At seventeen, I started to starve myself”
Narrator:
“Florence + the Machine is an English indie rock band that formed in London in 2007. The band is made up of vocalist Florence Welch, keyboardist Isabella Summers, guitarist Rob Ackroyd and harpist Tom Monger. Florence + the Machine’s style has been described as “dark, robust and romantic”. With song themes surrounding ideas of; love and death, time and pain and heaven and hell. The song I will be discussing is called Hunger and it was released in May 2018 on their album, High as Hope.”
Tape – Hunger Studio Version – Lyrics:
“Tell me what you need, oh, you look so free
The way you use your body, baby”
Narrator:
“Hunger was originally written as a poem that Florence wrote to herself about the ways she has looked for love in different places and people as well as it was a tribute to her eating disorder. This song expresses where Florence was mentally at that time. In an Instagram post caption after the song was released she says, “It’s not an overnight thing. It’s funny cause it’s one of the most insidious things you can have. It comes back in really strange ways… It’s very hard to accept love. If you’ve been denying yourself nourishment in some way, you also have a tendency to deny yourself emotional nourishment.”
Tape – Hunger Live Performance – Lyrics:
“And then it tries to find a home with people, or when I’m alone
Picking it apart and staring at your phone”
Narrator:
“Society as a whole does not always realize and recognize the amount of people struggling with the disease of anorexia. 14.9 million women will suffer from anorexia in their lifetime. This number is continuously growing and someone you love could be accounted for within it. Anorexia is becoming an epidemic. Anorexia often is called a quiet disease for it is something that is not always vocalized by those struggling as well as there are not too many activists for eating disorders that have suffered from the disease themselves. No one wants to talk about the things that make them uncomfortable or things that are not a common social question. It is these topics though that get overlooked. Without awareness being brought to the subject more people will continue to fall victim to this disease. The things we are doing now are not working to stop the rise in eating disorders.”
Tape – Hunger Live Performance – Lyrics:
“We all have a hunger
We all have a hunger
We all have a hunger”
Narrator:
“An eating disorder, as the National Eating Disorder Association defines it, are serious but treatable mental and physical illnesses that can affect people of all genders, ages, races, religions, ethnicities, sexual orientations, body shapes, and weights. National surveys estimate that 20 million women and 10 million men in America will have an eating disorder at some point in their lives. Many people expect men to not have eating disorders but the rise of men with eating disorders is on an incline. Some of this incline can be found to be in relation to social media. There is a relationship between social media and eating disorders. You can see a curve that as social media rises, eating disorders rise almost as if it’s some idealization. We, as a society, are constantly comparing ourselves to the things and people we see on social media. We have this idea that we need to obtain this unrealistic body in order to be loved and accepted.”
https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org
Tape — “It’s Too Personal”: Florence + The Machine Didn’t think She’d Release New Song ‘Hunger’ – Florence talking:
“There’s just this feeling sometimes that you’re not good enough and like you have to be perfect and how can you get love and how will you be acceptable and what is the right way to be. This song is about pain but it also is a celebration, uhm, of how much I see young people kind of changing things, you know, like no I want to look this way or like I wanna be… and especially young people they’re just so switched on and engaged and I know perhaps social media has its issue but…”
Tape – Hunger Studio Performance – Lyrics:
“We all have a hunger
We all have a hunger
We all have a hunger”
Narrator:
“In an interview with BBC radio Florence taps into discussing what she sees as her chaos. Florence explains how powerful she now realizes her own personal chaos can be. It has been a way to connect her to a larger audience as well as a way to hold herself accountable. She says this song was about putting a big, unanswerable, spiritual question in a pop song and that question posed was what are we actually looking for?”
Tape — “It’s Too Personal”: Florence + The Machine Didn’t think She’d Release New Song ‘Hunger’ – Florence talking:
“It’s weird because I never thought this song would be a song. You know it just was a poem I was writing to myself about the ways that I think I’ve perhaps looked-for love in things that weren’t love? I thought that if I could have this person it would fix everything, you know you’re like, it’s you it’s definitely you and you’re the answer and why don’t you want to fix this because it will be fixed it will be fine if you just, why aren’t you interested in doing it. Ya know, you kinda like.. and I think with this record it was a recognition of oh it’s me (laugh), it’s like ah, okay okay I get it, I’m the only continuity within all of this.”
Tape – Hunger Live Performance – Lyrics:
“and for a moment
I thought that love was in the drugs
But the more I took, the more it took away
And I could never get enough”
Narrator:
“This song was one Florence felt was too personal and vulnerable to share so she originally didn’t want it on the album. This song is a tribulation to Florence’s struggle with anorexia, self-love, and recovery from alcohol and drugs. She hopes by her being vulnerable it will allow others to connect with her. Eating disorders are said to be caused by genetic and biological factors as well as psychological and emotional factors. People with eating disorders may have low self-esteem, perfectionism, impulsive behavior and troubled relationships.”
Tape – Hunger Studio Performance – Lyrics:
“We all have a hunger
We all have a hunger
We all have a hunger”
Narrator:
“In this song hunger takes on two meanings. There’s the literal hunger from starving herself but also hunger for people, love, happiness, etc. I think we’ve all been there. We have this hunger for wanting more as in we romanticize, wish, hope, desire and just crave whatever it may be.”
Tape – Hunger Live Performance – Lyrics:
“I thought that love was on the stage
You give yourself to strangers
You don’t have to be afraid”
Narrator:
“There is research done on the relationship between sexuality and eating disorders. In a journal article called “Women, Sex, and Food: A Review of Research on Eating Disorders and Sexuality.” by Michael Wiederman, it discusses an interesting point that when girls are struggling with eating disorders they think less men will be attracted to them although they think men like and look for skinny girls. The Journal further discusses how girls who developed eating disorders seem as if they were more sexually active earlier on in life then those without eating disorders. Florence openly discusses how she has used sex and drugs to feel less alone and this paired with the eating disorder was the perfect storm. It’s interesting to me that this article talks about women using sex as a way to secure men or feel accepted and loved and this is exactly what Florence has felt for so long.”
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3813276
Tape – Hunger Live Performance – Lyrics:
“And at least I understood then, the hunger I felt
And I didn’t have to call it loneliness”
Tape – Studio Brussel Interview: Florence + The Machine. – Florence talking:
“This one perhaps was more about thee, a different kind of love, like one that is, trying to aim for love that doesn’t come from a place of lack, that doesn’t come from a place of need that perhaps comes from a place of wholeness.”
Narrator:
“In an article by The Guardian it says that, “Needing to be constantly ‘on’ and looking a certain way does have an impact. The music industry is very unpredictable, so I think when you are able to control some aspect of your life – the way you eat, the way you look – then you feel you’re more in control.” 32% of artists have or are struggling with eating disorders. Eating disorders among singers is very common and the cause is found to be all the comments made surrounding artists’ image. Many artists think they can’t get fat in order to maintain their fame. People are constantly making comments about these artists’ appearances and it makes it hard for them to accept themselves. The music industry will praise women for being skinny and their appearance.”
Tape – Hunger Live Performance – Lyrics:
“And it’s Friday night and it’s kicking in
In that pink dress, they’re gonna crucify me
Oh, and you in all your vibrant youth
How could anything bad ever happen to you?
You make a fool of death with your beauty, and”
Narrator:
“In an article with British Vogue Florence says “I don’t know if it was owing to societal pressure, or a genetic predisposition to perfectionism and anxiety (eating disorders and addiction are rife in my family), but somewhere along the line I had learned that I was wrong, that I was not good enough, not smart enough, not thin enough. I was so angry with myself all the time. How that happened, I don’t know – I am still trying to understand what makes young women go to war with themselves.”
https://www.vogue.co.uk/article/florence-welch-on-addiction-and-sobriety
Tape – Hunger Live Performance – Lyrics:
“We all have a hunger
We all have a hunger
We all have a hunger”
Narrator:
“It’s not an overnight thing. It’s funny, cause it’s one of the most insidious things you can have. It comes back in really strange ways… It’s very hard to accept love. If you’ve been denying yourself nourishment in some way, you also have a tendency to deny yourself emotional nourishment.”
…
“Sometimes loving too much or not enough can lead to emptiness and make you feel as if you are not being capable of love. Worrying about this can be overwhelming. This is an anthem uniting us all that we have this hunger and are not alone.”
Tape – Hunger Live Performance and Hunger Studio Version – Lyrics:
“You make a fool of death with your beauty, and for a moment
I forget to worry”
(applause)
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