FEATURE:
Spotlight
are with artists rising and coming through. I do occasionally spotlight those who have been in the industry for longer but deserve wider recognition. That is the case with Florrie. She has been putting out music since 2010. Her album, Magic for a While, is out in October. This incredible artist, drummer and songwriter is someone who I absolutely love. There are a couple of interviews that I want to bring in. I am going back to 2024 first of all. Her third album comes out in the autumn. There is a great interview with Revamp around the release of her previous album, The Lost Ones. Incredible, synthesiser and percussion-driven Electro-Pop. Songs like Kissing in the Cold and Looking for Love get right into the head:
“For an artist who’s been releasing music since 2010, it might surprise those unfamiliar with Florrie that she’s about to release her debut album, The Lost Ones. For longtime fans, this has been a long, long time coming, feeling like a slightly surreal victory lap for an artist who has been on quite the journey for over a decade.
Florrie began her career as a drummer and songwriter for Xenomania, the British pop-music smash hit factory who are best known for Girls Aloud’s hits. Her own discography, a hidden treasure trove of should-have-been mega hits includes the electronic, synth dream that is Begging Me, to the glittery, anthemic I Took a Little Something (and more on that later…). Florrie’s music demands to be heard live and loud, showcasing her talents not only as a singer-songwriter but also as a dynamic drumming powerhouse.
The early to mid-2010s seemed poised to be Florrie’s breakout period. Starting as an independent artist and then signing with a label, her career unfortunately hit the breaks, unexpectedly.
Despite these challenges, she has steadily rebuilt her musical path with a series of singles since 2019, culminating in the 2022 compilation, Personal. Fans were thrilled to discover that Florrie had secretly been back in the studio with longtime collaborator Brian Higgins, finally bringing us her long-awaited debut album, The Lost Ones.
She’s just wrapped her (first-ever) US tour, supporting G Flip, serving as quite the warm-up for her upcoming series of performances at The O2, where she’ll open for Girls Aloud. It’s set to be a full-circle moment, as she drummed on their 2008 hit The Promise and co-wrote their anthem Something New.
You're about to perform a couple of shows, opening for Girls Aloud at the O2 in just over a week, which is pretty major! It's also a full circle moment for you as you drummed on their hit The Promise and even co-wrote the epic Something New. How are you feeling about it all?
First of all, I’m very excited to play the O2! It feels crazy on the one hand where I haven’t done a show in a few years, and now I’m playing at the O2!
[After] doing the tour with G, I feel very confident getting out there and playing, it all came back very quickly which was nice. It is a great, full circle moment. I didn’t really expect it…
We reached out to Girls Aloud’s manager, and he was like “I’m up for this, but the girls need to say yes”, and then I waited about 4-5 weeks, and I started thinking they might have a DJ and not want someone else playing… Then I got this really lovely email from them saying “We would love for you to do this, it’ll be a really lovely full circle moment”.
I still work with Brian Higgins who wrote all of Girls Aloud’s songs, and we produced my album together, so I think to have that connection, and obviously drumming on The Promise in those early days… I’m excited for that team of people. They’re coming on the first night, which is stressing me slightly… I’m sure it’ll be fine…!
You've done your very best to keep your fans fed over the last decade and more (and thank you!), despite how challenging it must have felt at times. When did you come to the realisation and decision that you were ready to go for it and put out your debut album?
Someone else asked me this… I can’t remember and I’m sure there was a day where I sat down with Brian and said “We’re gonna do this, let’s do this”.
But I think it was quite a natural process, because I’d been writing a lot anyway from when I was in this pretty low place, to well… a year ago really. I’d been putting songs to one side and releasing singles, and I knew I wanted to tell my story and create a body of work. And when I say putting songs to one side, it wasn’t finished songs, it might have just been a verse idea or some chords I liked.
When I decided to make the album, that’s what we got really stuck into. And I’ve had the luxury of time, I’ve worked with Brian for such a long time. It’s not like when you’ve got 25 days in the studio, with this producer, and you’ve got to make a record. It was a very gradual process of working on some songs here and there, and I took songs on and off, however many times until I was really happy with the record and what it was saying.
I had an idea in the back of my mind that one day… I will release an album!
And here it is, it’s happening! Us longtime fans have noticed there are a handful of your older songs that you've re-recorded for the album, including one of your best, I Took a Little Something. What can we expect from this new version and how did you come to the decision to re-record it?
I think I always knew that I wanted to put one or two of my favourite older songs on the album, sort of as a nod to the older listeners and fans who’ve literally stuck by me for so long! I get a lot of messages about older songs as well. Part of it was choosing my favourite and then I’d try to choose a song that people message me a lot about, which was I Took a Little Something.
Get You Back was one of my favourites, from the EPs which was why I wanted to put it on.
And then, Looking For Love’s a weird one because I played it a few times live, and it was the last song I added to the album. My manager, Charlie, he has been a fan since day one. When I met him a year and a half ago, I’d finished the album, he’d heard it and everything, and then one day he was just like “Do you know what will live in my head forever is Looking For Love” and I was like “...that is such a great song!”.
It got me thinking about it, we talked about it back and forth, and I was like… “I should re-look at that”. I don’t really go back and listen, I have been recently because I’ve been putting together setlists. There’s so many songs to choose from! But Looking For Love is a banger…”.
I did want to bring in this new interview from The Female Lead. This remarkable drummer and singer-songwriter discusses “people-pleasing, the women who championed her and trusting her gut”. I have been a fan of Florrie for a while now. This is a year when a lot of new people are discovering her music. If you have not heard much of what she has put out, I would suggest you go back and listen. A remarkable talent:
“Do you think you may be at a point in your life where you're much more comfortable doing that?
“I don’t know what happened to me last year,” she laughs. “But I turned 36 and something literally switched in my head.”
For someone who describes herself as a “lifelong people pleaser”, the shift has been significant.
“I do think it’s an age thing. It’s a great feeling. The older I get, the less I care - in a good way - about what other people think of me. Because I am someone that throughout my life has really cared.”
Florrie wrote the album during a period of uncertainty while living in Los Angeles.
“I was in this transition period of not knowing whether to stay or whether to come back,” she says. “It got me thinking about all these other times in my life where you’ve chosen to go down one path and it’s led you somewhere. But what if you had taken another one?”
This, she explains, is the “overarching theme of the record”.
So where are you finding magic in her own life right now?
“First of all, I love nature,” she says. “The older I get, the more I appreciate being quiet.”
“Seeing my best friend become a mum. That’s really magical. And she’s nailing it. I mean, she doesn’t feel like she is, but she is nailing it. I think I see a lot of magical things around me in a really nice way.”
It’s an answer that says a lot about where Florrie is right now. Less concerned with chasing validation and more interested in appreciating the people and moments around her.
Throughout her life and career, Florrie has been inspired by different women.
“I started this job at Xenomania as the drummer. It was this big house in the countryside, there were like 30 people there, musicians, writers, all different ages. But the lady who ran it was called Miranda Cooper.”
“Before then [the people working around me] were all guys and bands really… I guess there wasn’t anyone in my sort of everyday life who I looked up to.”
“But Miranda was one of the most prolific female songwriters in the UK. She was lovely and she really empowered everyone else around her,” Florrie says. “Miranda was a real leader.”
“I was actually quite nervous of her,” Florrie admits of first meeting Miranda. Looking back now, she sees it differently, remembering Miranda as a “really big” role model in her early years of being a musician.
Closer to home, however, her biggest inspiration has always been her mum, a single parent who ran her own business. “I’m so close to my mum. I speak to her once, if not twice a day, every single day,” Florrie says. “In my head she just balanced everything. She just made it all work. I don’t think she really feels like that, but she was a big inspiration growing up. She’s just my absolute champion.”
Another woman who changed the course of her life was Cassandra Gracey, who spotted something special in a young drummer she’d met briefly in a lawyer’s waiting room.
Months later, Cassandra called with an opportunity.
“She called me maybe six months later and said, ‘This is going to be really random, but I got your number because I remember you from this lawyer’s office. I thought you had a really sort of special energy. And I’ve got a friend who’s looking for a drummer to be part of this team.’ She was amazing. She really championed me as well.”
That connection became Florrie’s introduction to Xenomania.
Although music remains heavily male-dominated behind the scenes, Florrie considers herself fortunate that her earliest experiences in the industry were unusually inclusive.
“Being part of Xenomania, I was very protected from the wider sexism in the music industry,” she says. “It was an incredible environment to have the first ten years of my musical life in.”
In fact, Florrie says she didn’t encounter much sexism at all during the first decade of her career. “It’s only the last six or seven years where I’ve seen it.”
When it did happen, it came as a surprise.
“I was actually shocked when I first experienced very blatant sexism, where someone refused to talk to me and directed everything at a male colleague, even though it was something that I dealt with.”
The confidence she’s developed in recent years has also changed the way she sees herself.
“When I first started out, I definitely felt like I had to look and be a certain way,” Florrie says. “I felt like I had to be thin and pretty and make sure I was always wearing makeup every day.”
Now?
“I literally couldn’t care less.”
So what has changed?
“I trust myself more. I’ve got more confidence in my own decisions. When I make a decision now, I don’t need external validation. I was a real worrier back in my twenties. Whereas now I’m just feeling a lot more sure of myself and just a lot calmer in everyday life.”
I ask her if “stop worrying” would be the advice she’d give to her younger self?
“The thing is, you just can’t say ‘stop worrying’. Does it ever work? Does it? No.”
“I’d probably just say: trust your gut a bit more.”
“There were a lot of times where I had quite a definite feeling about something, and some label exec would be like, ‘No, that’s a stupid idea’. And I would think he must know better.”
Now, Florrie knows that’s not the case.
“Creatively, you know yourself better than anyone else ultimately”.
This is someone who I would love to see live. I can imagine that her live shows are wonderous. I really love her music, and I am excited to see what Magic for a While offers. The Line of Best Fit announced great news of a new album from an artist that is beyond talented. In a league of her own:
“Magic For a While started to take shape in early 2025 while Florrie - a drummer, singer-songwriter, and model from Bristol - was living alone in Los Angeles. Recording live drum loops, she brought the raw sketches into rehearsal rooms to build tracks through instinctive jam sessions.
“I wanted the record to feel live,” she explains. “I wanted energy in it. I wanted things to feel human.” Higgins, a co-writer and producer on much of the LP, helped shape those live impulses into sleek, expansive pop productions.
Florrie first built a cult reputation in the early 2010s through a string of self-released singles and EPs with Xenomania, while her drumming anchored hits like Girls Aloud’s “The Promise” and her songwriting credits extended to artists including Kylie, MNEK, and Tove Lo. More recently, she has played London’s O2 Arena supporting Girls Aloud and toured the US with G Flip, moving her beyond an internet-pop underground to a new audience.
Magic For a While is the follow-up to Florrie's debut solo album, The Lost Ones, which was released in 2024”.
I am going to finish here. The simply awe-inspiring Florrie is an artist I have not featured before but wanted to now. She is truly remarkable. I think that we will see her release many more albums, each different and equally stunning. Florrie is an artist that you need to…
ADD her to your playlist.
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