Featured photo by Alex Crick
Since releasing How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful last summer, Florence and The Machine have spent a fair amount of time contributing their inimitable style to soundtracks. The Florence Welch-led outfit turned in a trio of songs for the Final Fantasy XV video game, and now they’ve teamed with Tim Burton for a track for his new film, Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children.
Burton and Florence Welch actually worked together on “Wish That You Were Here”, a song that perfectly matches the film’s themes. As Welch said in a press release, the track is “about the idea that love is a journey and a risk. Having been on tour, I’ve lived in a sort of magical time bubble, where the days almost blend together. It’s amazing, but it comes at a cost — a cost of leaving the people you love behind for a year or two. You kind of feel like if you could sing a song into the wind, maybe the wind could take it to them in a way that you can’t with a text or a call. You just want to send your love in a different way, in a way to somehow reach the unreachable.”
“Wish That You Were Here” reaches out with crashing percussion and soaring strings, with Welch crying out for the touch of her beloved: “And I am reaching out with every note I sing/ And I hope it gets to you on some Pacific wind/ Wraps itself around you and whispers in your ear/ Tells you that I miss you and wish that you were here.” Listen above.
Welch said that she’s long had a desire to work with Burton, noting that they share a taste for art that is “so beautiful and whimsical, but with an element of darkness to it.” She added that “he feels like a kindred spirit,” one she’s been trying to connect with for some time.
“I actually sent him a note about six years ago. I was in Australia on tour there for the first time and visited an exhibition of all his work. I wanted to leave him a message and all I had on me was an x-ray of my hand, as I had just broken my finger. So I wrote on the x-ray and gave it to the gallery to pass on and never knew if he got it. When we met for the first time, he told me it’s been hanging up in his office ever since.”
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children hits theaters on September 30th. “Wish That You Were Here” will be available through digital retailers beginning tomorrow (August 26th).
