Beauty is baffled by own songs

THE girl certainly has the Lungs to belt out a killer song . . . but don't ask her what the hell it's about.

Because Florence And The Machine couldn't tell you.

The flame-haired singer - whose debut album Lungs is one of 12 in line for this Tuesday's Mercury Music Prize awards - admits her fans are better at working out her lyrics than she is.

"I don't even know if my songs have positive or negative feelings," Florence, real name Florence Welch, told Rated. "Other people tell me the same song can be about belief or the apocalypse or the recession. Maybe they're all right!"

And at only 23, Florence - who won the Critics' Choice award at the Brits for this year's most hotly-tipped new talent - doesn't think she'll find the answers to life's problems any time soon.

"I don't particularly feel like an adult," she ponders. "I look back at my youth and think, 'Back then, I didn't know what I was talking about'. But I doubt I ever will! You just carry on, always looking for answers. And then you die, never knowing what you were talking about."

It's statements like that which have led people to pigeonhole Florence as a hippy chick. Not that the friendly south Londoner minds her public image. "I don't do myself any favours with the hippy label," she laughs. "I do float around in peach chiffon dresses."

At our interview Florence sticks to apple juice. But she admits her drinking on tour has started to worry her. "I get bored on tour, and I've over-compensated by drinking too much," she says. "It's a bad habit. I don't go on stage drunk - but my trouble is, I need excitement every day. I should stick to exploring cities, checking out museums."

Ghost

Apart from music, Florence's other big love is art which she gets from her mother Evelyn, an art historian. Her dad Nick is an advertising executive who wrote the slogan "Have you felt the bubbles melt?" for Aero.

"When I was a kid, mum told me the best stories about art," enthuses Florence. "She took me to the Victoria and Albert Museum recently and was full of stories about it all. I don't know if that's where I get my vivid imagination from. I walk around pretending I'm a ghost sometimes. I wish I could walk around in another period of history, like Ancient Rome."

So how has someone so otherworldly coped with being famous? "Oh, it was terrifying at first," she grins. "The night of the Brits, I was so scared, I cried afterwards.

"Seriously, how do people like Amy Winehouse cope?"

Florence feels the most comfortable on stage. "It's the best thing there is," she says. "If I acted in everyday life the way I do on stage, people would go 'What are you doing?' But on stage, I'm allowed, and there's hundreds of people like me who feel the same for that night. Isn't that amazing?"

Yes. As amazing as you are Florence.

HER new single The Drumming Song is out on September 14

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