How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful is the third studio album by the English indie rock band Florence and the Machine, released on 29 May 2015 by Island Records. After her year-long break from music, the lead vocalist, Florence Welch, returned to configure the album, recording material that dealt with personal conflicts and struggles. In comparison to the band's two previous studio albums, it is much more refined and stripped-down instrumentally, and incorporates a mixture of musical influences such as folk, blues and gospel.
How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful was met with positive reviews from music critics, who commended the album for its cohesion, production and Welch's vocal delivery. It appeared on several year-end critics' lists. The album entered the UK Albums Chart at number one with 68,788 copies sold in its first week, becoming the band's third consecutive number-one album. Four singles were released, "What Kind of Man", "Ship to Wreck", "Queen of Peace" and "Delilah". The album earned the band five Grammy Award nominations, in addition to being shortlisted for the 2015 Mercury Prize.
Background
In 2011, Florence and the Machine released their second studio album, Ceremonials, which was their second consecutive release to peak at number one on the UK Albums Chart, as well as the first to reach the top 10 of the US Billboard 200, peaking at number six. The album included the song "Spectrum (Say My Name)", which was remixed by the Scottish musician Calvin Harris and became the group's first number-one single on the UK Singles Chart in July 2012. In late August 2012, Welch told Style.com'[ that she would take a year-long break from music, explaining, "There's a big 'take a year off' plan. The record company have put no pressure on me for the next album. They've said I can have as long as I want." During her break, Welch made a guest appearance on Calvin Harris's album 18 Months, singing vocals on the track "Sweet Nothing", which topped the UK chart.
Conception and recording
In an interview with Zane Lowe on 16 February 2015, Welch said that during the year off she had "a bit of a nervous breakdown", and that time was chaotic. The break was new for her, having almost constantly been at work during the making of the band's first two albums. She explained further, saying, "I was still going out and going to events but something wasn't quite right, I was spiraling a bit. I wasn't making myself happy. I wasn't stable." It allowed her to reassess her musical approach to reflect her own life experiences, a change she credits to consulting with Taylor Swift. Overall, the recording sessions for How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful were conducted during a vulnerable period in her life, making the album her most personal work thus far.
Welch began composing the material for How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful after concluding the band's touring in support of Ceremonials in 2014. Regarding the album's themes, she said in a press statement, "I guess although I've always dealt in fantasy and metaphor when I came to writing, that meant the songs this time were dealing much more in reality. Ceremonials was so fixated on death and water, and the idea of escape or transcendence through death, but the new album became about trying to learn how to live, and how to love in the world rather than trying to escape from it. Which is frightening because I'm not hiding behind anything but it felt like something I had to do." Welch also told Lowe that the producer Markus Dravs was instrumental in exploring her lyrical versatility, as he forebade her to write any more songs about water, a main theme in her past compositions. Still, she managed to write "Ship to Wreck", a song which she jokingly commented was "not too explicit" in comparison to her past works.