Florence Welch felt lucky to be given a second chance to perform a song for ‘Game of Thrones’ after rejecting an offer to record a track for the HBO series during her "wild years".
At the end of episode two of Season 8, ‘A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’, her band Florence + the Machine perform the haunting ballad ‘Jenny of Oldstones’ over the end credits, a song about a doomed woman who had an affair with Prince Duncan Targaryen. It will be the last song to be played by a contemporary artist over the end credits as the programme comes to an end.
However, Florence had been approached by the fantasy drama’s creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss to provide her distinct vocals to a track for the end credits of ‘The Rains of Castamere’ in Season 2 but she declined the offer.
The ‘Shake It Out’ hitmaker admits she can’t remember ever being asked to contribute a song to the show because the offer came when she was going through her hard partying phase.
Speaking about her snub to The New York Times, she said: "I think that was during my quote-unquote wild years. If I’m being super honest, there are a lot of things that are a bit blurry. I wasn’t as … involved, or, shall we say, as focused as I am now … I’m glad that they came back to me. I feel really touched to be on the last season, to be the last singer. And I’m grateful that I get to be a bit more present for it, to celebrate the ending of ‘Game of Thrones’ in a clear place."
The song ‘Jenny of Oldstones’ also featured in the episode itself, performed by Podrick (Daniel Portman) after Tyrion Lannister (Peter Dinklage) asks someone to sing ahead of the imminent Battle of Winterfell and it seemingly predicts the dark fate awaiting many of the characters.
Florence, 32, had no idea what the song was about or how it would be used because Benioff and Weiss were so secretive about the plot, although they did send her a simple melody as the basis of the track.
She said: "To be honest, they keep such a tight ship on ‘Game of Thrones’, they didn’t tell us what the visual would be. We weren’t told what’s going to happen in the episode. We weren’t even told what the episode is called. It was all so top secret, so cloak-and-dagger!"
Discussing how she might have changed the track – which was co-written by Thomas Bartlett, who worked with Florence on the fourth Florence + the Machine album ‘High as Hope’ – if she had been given the script beforehand, she added: "I would have been like, ‘We need fanfares, and you’re going to have to get a dragon on here somehow.’ I might have – as I can do sometimes – overblown it. So I’m glad I didn’t know then, but I’m glad to know now."
Florence Welch thrilled to get second chance on Game of Thrones
