 | Album Title: Songs from Final Fantasy XV |
| Record Label: Island Records | |
| Catalog No.: N/A | |
| Release Date: August 12, 2016 | |
| Purchase: Buy from iTunes |
Overview
The involvement of Florence and the Machine in the next numbered installment of the blockbuster video game series, Final Fantasy XV (FFXV), was first revealed when Florence Welch’s soaring voice was featured in a trailer released in March during the event Uncovered: Final Fantasy XV, covering Ben E. King’s anthem, “Stand By Me.” As Welch is known for her flair for melodrama and baroque soundscapes, which dovetail perfectly with the soul-stirring plot and grandiose world that the Final Fantasy series is known for, it seems like a fitting move to induct Welch into the coveted list of Final Fantasy songstresses.
While this is not the first time the Final Fantasy series has collaborated with a high-profile Western singer—for example, Final Fantasy XIII licensed Leona Lewis’s “My Hands” for the Western release—Welch’s contribution to FFXV marks the first true musical collaboration with a mainstream artist, given that Welch was personally involved in the composition and arrangement of all three songs released on the digital EP — Songs from Final Fantasy XV. In addition to her band members, Welch also enlisted the help of notable producers Emile Haynie (Lana Del Rey, Bruno Mars) and Jeff Bhasker (Leona Lewis, Taylor Swift) to create the orchestral trio for this EP.
Body
Songs from Final Fantasy XV marks the first major release from Florence and the Machine since the success of the band’s third studio album, How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful (HBHBHB), which was their first to debut atop the Billboard 200 chart and netted them five Grammy nominations. But instead of perpetuating the gritty, stripped-down sounds Welch embraced in HBHBHB, Welch chooses to revisit the lavishly ornamented and relentlessly romantic soundscape she created on the band’s second album, Ceremonials, on Songs from Final Fantasy XV, which is admittedly more aligned with the world of Final Fantasy, as epitomized by the first track “Too Much Is Never Enough.”
“Too Much Is Never Enough” is one of the two original tracks Welch recorded for the game in addition to the “Stand By Me” cover. The song’s structure can be broken down into A-B-C-A-B-C-D-C-E, of which section C is the refrain and section D is the bridge. Crooning “And the crown it weighs heavy/’Till it’s banging on my eyelids”, which alludes to the massive heft destiny made inextricable with the royal identity of Noctis — the crowned protagonist of FFXV — Welch begins the song, buoying her voice gently with harp and piano.
Constant beats of percussion begin to percolate in Section B like echoes of distant footsteps as Welch loosens the trammels on her voice and lets it rise to the crest, belting the lines “Oh, grant that I can stay the night/Or one more day inside this life” with piercing intensity. A powerfully sustained note that concludes Section B paves the way to Section C, the triumphant refrain, which resolves the tension built up in the previous section as Welch chants the titular text “Too much, too much, too much, too much, too much/Never enough” repeatedly.
In the repeat of Section B, Welch ingeniously adds another layer of counterpoint, which later becomes the main melodic line for Section E, the outro. After the second chorus, singing “And who cares about the thing I did that night?/So what? Maybe Luna had it right” (Luna in the lyrics refers to Lunafreya, the heroine of FFXV, who also starred in the CGI film Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV), Welch ushers in the bridge (Section D) like innumerable golden rays piercing the tenebrous clouds after a turbulent storm, creating a satisfyingly cathartic auditory experience as her voice converges with the cascading strings and intertwines with a chorus sung by Welch as well.
Section C returns immediately for one last time before Section E, the outro, in which Welch concludes the epic journey with the melodic line used earlier as counterpoint to Section B, intoning “One more year, a hundred flags flying in the field/One more day, felt it let go of me.” At the time of writing, FFXV had not yet been released, but the song seems to encapsulate the crux of Noctis’s story masterfully, ensconced in the singular style of Welch — an impressive feat worthy of the musical legacy of the Final Fantasy series.
“Stand By Me” — the beloved classic sung by Ben E. King — has been covered numerous times in various styles and languages. In Welch’s iteration of the song for FFXV, despite the resolutely majestic orchestral instrumentation, Welch otherwise adheres to the original reverently, making only minor twists to the melody of the refrain when it is repeated after the instrumental interlude. The track opens lightly with arpeggio figures delicately played on harp, kept steady by a constant percussive pulse threading underneath. The signature bassline of the original song does not appear until the second verse, plucked out on double bass. Following the interlude led by the strings as well as a chorus layered with Welch’s vocals, the brass section takes over the bassline as Welch starts to embellish her own flourishes into the refrain, gearing up the track for a grand finale.
In Welch’s own words, “‘Stand By Me’ is one of the greatest songs probably of all time and you can’t really improve on it, you just have to make it your own. For me it was just about bringing the song into the world of Florence and the Machine and the world
