Florence Welch was terrified she would “f*** this up” when she joined Taylor Swift onstage during The Eras Tour.
The Florence + The Machine singer made a surprise appearance during her friend’s final concert at London’s Wembley Stadium in August 2024 and she was taken by surprised when she discovered she’d have to learn choreography as part of their duet on Florida!!!.
Speaking in the new Disney+ docuseries Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour – The End of an Era, she said: “I have performed on big stages, but I thought I’d just run around because that’s what I do at my own shows.
“When I got there, they were like, ‘This is your choreography.’ I was like, ‘No, no, no, wait, you must be confused. I don’t do this! I’m gonna f*** this up!’”
Although the performance went smoothly, Florence was “completely” terrified about stepping on the stage during such a major show.
She said: “The feeling of coming up for the first time in that lift, it was kind of like landing on Mars, ‘cause I’d never seen the stage lit up before.
“It’s like, you see this cultural moment from the outside, and I suddenly was inside of it. It was wild, but it was really fun and completely terrifying.”
And the Shake It Out hitmaker had an awestruck moment where she saw her “cosy” friend in a new light.
She added: “Taylor is my friend, and I know her as this very cozy person, and I came out of that lift and I was like, ‘Oh my God, it’s f****** Taylor Swift!’”
Florence previously admitted the experience has inspired her to “make some changes” to her own career.
She told The Guardian newspaper: “It was amazing. I will say that, yes, I’m someone who wants to hide from the vague humiliations of fame. But I did step out on that stadium stage with her and I was like, this is pretty f****** cool. After this, I’m gonna have to make some changes.”
Florence also spoke about the difference in the music industry between when she released her debut at the age of 22 and now when stars like Ethel Cain and Chappell Roan are celebrated for building careers around a persona.
She explained: “When I was becoming Florence + the Machine, there was a sense that if you are flamboyant, it’s contrivance. Actually expressing your imagination upon yourself and upon your body was inauthentic and attention-seeking, or annoying. It made me shrink myself. I was still big on stage and big in my art, but offstage, I made myself smaller.
“They are allowed to keep their personal boundaries and create this incredible world and character. It’s amazing. But when I was coming up, if you created a world and a character, it was, like, ‘so contrived’. Now, there’s this celebration of people creating imaginative worlds.
“People really need worlds to disappear into. So all these communities build up around artists, and I think people really, really crave it at the moment.”