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Florence + The Machine's Florence Welch has changed her tune about TikTok after speaking out against the app earlier this year. Several female artists criticized the app, but mainly the pressures they get from labels to post and go viral on TikTok. "The label are begging me for ‘low fi tik toks’ so here you go. pls send help," she captioned one of her posts.
Now, in a recent interview with The New Yorker for a piece about the influence of the platform on the music industry, Welch revealed that she's actually warmed up to TikTok and its "anarchic" audience.
She first revealed that she “actively [doesn’t] want to go viral," and "Anytime anything of mine has gone remotely viral, it’s filled me with dread. Any kind of attention that is not directly related to the work or an album, I don’t want it." She also added, "My fans, the people who follow me, are not going to believe that I just suddenly decided to do TikTok.”
Welch continued, "I was just, like, I am about to go into another meeting about this launch, and they are going to f---ing ask me why haven’t I done something," and gave in to posting the required TikToks.
Since giving in, a TikTok of her singing the song "My Love," went viral and she found the experience to be "anarchic and hilarious and weird in a way that I really enjoyed.” She also revealed that she enjoys the audience on the app. "I feel like it’s a platform on which you can be stranger. Like, if I just want to drink fake blood in a graveyard, TikTok is an environment that would embrace that.”