SONG OF THE DAY
“Cosmic Love” by Florence and The Machine (Lungs, Universal Island/ Moshi Moshi/ IAMSOUND Records, 2010). Written by Florence Welch & Isabella Summers.
WHERE I HEARD IT
HBO’s Big Love, Season 5.
INTERESTING FACTS (a la wikipedia)
– “Cosmic Love” is the sixth (seventh, counting the re-release of “Dog Days Are Over”) single from the album Lungs.
– Florence elaborated on the writing of the song: “Cosmic Love” was a joke title, but it stuck. The most hungover I’ve ever been when writing a song. I went to her studio after having been to a party, and I was lying on the floor wanting to vomit. We were working really hard on a song and just trying to make this shit piano part work, and all of a sudden I hit on one note, and I’d got it. We wrote the whole song in half an hour.
– “Cosmic Love” has been widely praised, with many reviews calling it the best track on the album.
– Pitchfork Media says the song is “audaciously huge” and one of the album’s “finest” tracks, alongside “Blinding”.
– A promotional music video for the song was shot on 24 March, 2010. Welch’s manager Mairead Nash described it as “amazing.” The video was debuted on the band’s official website on 11 May, 2010. The music video begins with a shot of a lightbulb flashing. Welch is then seen to walk through some trees with autumn leaves, and a light falls into her eye, making her scream. The video then moves on to show Welch lying on the floor in a black outfit, in a mirrored room filled with different coloured lights around her. She then stands up a dances in the room. The video then moves back to Florence walking through the autumn leaves, with blue, green and purple lighting shining on her, and she appears to be lost as she is surveying her surroundings. The scene of Welch in the room of lights then changes to darker lighting, and her outfit changes into a white dress with lights. Later in the song, during this scene, leaves are seen to surround her as she is dancing. The video ends with Florence taking the light from inside her chest, and releasing it into the air, and it floats into the lightbulb which started the video.
– The song is featured in a climactic scene of the eight episode of the 2009 TV series V.
– The song is featured in episode eleven of the sixth season of Grey’s Anatomy, “Blink”.
– The song is featured on an episode of the seventh season of So You Think You Can Dance.
– The song is featured in the episode “Bloodlines” and in the season 2 promo for The Vampire Diaries.
– The song is featured in advertisements for the eleventh season premiere of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.
– The band performs an acoustic version of this song in the episode “Panic Roommate” of the fourth season of Gossip Girl.
– The song is featured in the closing credits of episode five of the fifth season of Big Love, “The Special Relationship”.