Only If for A Night

Album: Ceremonials (2011)
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Songfacts®:

  • This song was inspired by a dream Florence had in a camper van parked in a German wood while she was on tour with MGMT. "There's a song on it that's inspired by a visit [from] my dead grandmother — like, I had a really, really vivid dream about her and, um, she was giving me advice in this dream," she explained to Q magazine. "And it was really emotional, and I woke up crying. And there's one song that's inspired by that experience."
  • Joan of Arc also crops up on this song. For more tunes about the medieval French heroine, check out the pair of hit singles by OMD "Joan of Arc" and "Maid Of Orleans (The Waltz Joan Of Arc)." Also Leonard Cohen featured a track called "Joan of Arc" on his 1970 Album, Songs of Love & Hate. If your music tastes extend to extreme heavy metal, you might want to give a listen to Cradle of Filth's "The Death of Love," which is about Joan being burned at the stake.

    Another Joan of Arc music connection is that Jane Wiedlin from the Go-Go's played the Hundred Years War martyr in the 1989 movie, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.
  • The song begins with a church bell-like piano riff before Florence enters with her vocals. She told Spinner how producer Paul Epworth's instrumentation prompted her to write the lyrics about her grandmother. Florence explained: "When Paul sent me this track that had church bells on it in the beginning, these English church bells, it suddenly brought me back to being at my Grandma 's house and hearing them, and her funeral, and things like that."

Comments: 1

  • Philip from Akron, OhIf you're going to bring up Joan of Arc references, Kate Bush's song "Joanni" of the album _Aerial_ is about her.
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