Game of Thrones: Florence + the Machine frontwoman on haunting 'Jenny's Song' cover

‘I was a binge watcher. I remember being like, “Oh, this is amazing. How have I not been watching this the whole time?”’

Florence Welch of Florence and the Machine performs at Manchester Arena on November 23, 2018 in Manchester, England ((Shirlaine Forrest/Getty Images for Gucci))

Only a handful of contemporary bands have furnished the end-credits music to “Game of Thrones” – the Hold Steady, for example, covered the Westerosi drinking song “The Bear and the Maiden Fair,” and the National covered the foreboding ballad “The Rains of Castamere.” In this week’s episode, it was Florence + the Machine, the last group who will ever do so, according to HBO.

Which was fitting: The band was one of the first that the series’ show runners, David Benioff and Dan Weiss, attempted to recruit.

That was for Season 2 – an eternity in pop culture time – when they had wanted that band’s frontwoman, Florence Welch, to sing “The Rains of Castamere.” Florence + the Machine turned down the request at the time, but Benioff and Weiss never let go of the idea.

“We’ve always been huge fans of Florence’s music,” they said in a joint statement. “So the opportunity to hear her otherworldly voice on our show was always at the forefront of our minds. We’re still pleasantly shocked that she agreed to sing ‘Jenny of Oldstones,’ and we’re in love with the result.”

Perhaps it was an easier sell now that Ms Welch, like so many millions of others, is a fan.

During the episode, Podrick Payne (Daniel Portman) sings a portion of that tragic love ballad over a montage of various pairings – Sam and Gilly, Sansa and Theon, Arya and Gendry, Missandei and Grey Worm – and finishes as Dany approaches Jon, perhaps as foreshadowing. His version has an air of hopefulness. Ms Welch’s, however, seems to capture more of the song’s inherent mysteries, even though, as she said in a phone interview, she had no idea while recording what would happen in the episode.

Ms Welch took a break from celebrating her grandfather’s 80th birthday in Galveston, Texas, to chat about the song and its possible meanings. (She joked that she was calling from Westeros.) Following are edited excerpts from that conversation.

Q: “Game of Thrones” licensed one of your songs (“Seven Devils”) for a trailer before, but this is the first time you’ve recorded something specifically for the show. Are you a fan? At what point did you get into “Game of Thrones”?

A: I missed the first two seasons, and then I found it and watched as many as I could, all in one go. [Laughs] I was a binge watcher. I remember being like, “Oh, this is amazing. How have I not been watching this the whole time?” I’m happy to see them coming together now. All the families will have to stop fighting, because there’s something bigger at stake. I think that’s really interesting because it’s echoing what’s actually happening right now with the ecological crisis. I’m really interested to see where that goes.

When did Season 2 come out? How many years ago was that?

Q: Season 2 was in 2012, so seven years.

A: Wow. And now, watching that trailer now, seven years on, I was like, “Oh my god, that’s [expletive] huge.” Especially with how huge the show has gotten. I think a lot of those things that happened early on in my career, I didn’t realise how big they were.

Q: Any regrets about passing on a previous request from the show to record a version of “The Rains of Castamere”?

A: Oh my god. [Expletive] Did I? I can’t remember. [Laughs] 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.

But even in the blurry years, when there was a lot of chaos, I was still pretty wary about what I said yes to. I tend to be pretty cautious about what songs I sing. So 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.

Q: What kind of direction did they give you with “Jenny of Oldstones”?

A: They just had a simple, stripped back, lilting melody. The notes of it sounded like a Celtic folk song to me. I thought it was really beautiful. I love the idea of dancing with ghosts and never wanting to leave. That totally makes sense to me. I feel like I do that every night on stage.

I worked with Thomas Bartlett on “High as Hope,” and he’s a piano genius. He helped formulate the chords, and then I kind of added my choir, my hellish soprano. We just tried to keep within the “Game of Thrones” world, to retain the ghostliness of it.

Q: This is a song that is shrouded in mystery in the books...

A: Really? There’s a kind of sadness to it, and it sounded kind of haunted to me. I’m always really drawn to that kind of thing. What’s it about?

Q: We don’t really know much. Although he wrote more verses, George R.R. Martin included only one lyric in the text so far: “High in the halls of the kings who are gone, Jenny would dance with her ghosts.” It’s more that we keep hearing about the song, and about Jenny, who might have been a witch, or just friends with a witch or one of the Children of the Forest. A Targaryen prince abdicated his crown to marry Jenny, so it’s a love story but also a mysterious tragedy, since her prince died at Summerhall.

Fans have various theories – that the song is about a prophecy, that it was written by Rhaegar Targaryen. In the show, they’ve had Jenny claiming to be a descendant of the Children of the Forest herself. So fans have been anticipating this one for a while.

A: Wow! Oh my god, that’s perfect! 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! When I heard it, it evoked something quite strongly in me – you can kind of feel that there is a presence in that song, like something that had history. So I’m really glad it does have a rich history!

It’s funny, they didn’t tell me any of this inside information. They just sent it to me, and I was like: “OK! I can do this.” Songs that people can resonate with emotionally, and that make people feel free to cry, I definitely like to make that kind of music, so they were probably like, “OK, we’ll go to Florence.” Maybe they just wanted me to have my own take on it? Or maybe it would have been too much pressure, this huge weight of importance? I just hope I don’t disappoint the fans looking forward to this song. I’m kind of glad they didn’t give me a brief. I would have overthought it.

Q: How so?

A: What I wanted to do with this song was keep it as sparse as possible. It does get a bit more rousing at the end, but I really wanted to retain the simplicity of the melody and the lyrics that they sent me, because I found them so moving. If I had known the history of the song, I would have been like, “[Expletive], 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. You want the beauty and the fragility in there as well. I would have made it too big, if I had known just how [expletive] big it is!

Q: There is a fantasy convention about magical songs – songs with magical effect. This might be one of them.

A: The act of singing has a kind of magic to me. It’s a kind of channelling. When I’m singing, I feel very much at peace, like I’m connected to something bigger than myself. That you can take people to that place with you, that’s a kind of physical magic, because you’re transcending yourself but you’re also bringing everyone with you. One of the most magical things we do as humans is singing, especially singing together. I think that’s partly why I was always obsessed with choirs, groups of voices that could reach higher than our physical selves. So it is a kind of alchemy. It’s hard to explain, but there’s definitely a sort of ritual to it.

Q: Have you ever seen some of the suggestions out there that you could play Melisandre?

A: Yes! I’m so on board to be Melisandre. She’s scary! I think I sometimes get mistaken for Sansa Stark as well. I thought you were going to go there. But I’ll take Melisandre. The witchiness, that’s definitely me. Although if I take my jewellary off, I don’t turn into an old lady. Or do I?

The New York Times