"Choreomania" by Florence + The Machine

- December 08, 2025

"Choreomania" is a striking embodiment of Florence's anxieties and of the act of choreomania itself, which is defined as the uncontrollable urge to dance. The song was inspired by this phenomenon dating back to the Middle Ages. It's a gorgeous, moving song that captures everything Dance Fever represents to me and all of the ways music becomes escapism and catharsis.

In an interview with iHeartRadio, Florence opened up about the inspiration for this song. She said, "I got really fascinated by this dance plague that happened in the 16th century. It's known as choreomania, and there's a song on the album called 'Choreomania', and that was one of the first songs I wrote for the record."

Written in 2019 and eventually released in 2022, it unintentionally took on new meaning as the world went through the pandemic. This modern interpretation of a little‑known piece of history from centuries ago suddenly felt particularly fitting for what so many were collectively experiencing in present day. "The weirdest thing about that song is that it was written before Covid. I started writing it in 2019 and, very strangely in the prescient ways that songs do, the ones that seem the most pandemic-y were written before the pandemic. And that happens to me quite a lot." she said in an interview with The Independent.

She co‑wrote the song with Jack Antonoff, who also produced the track. Florence sets the tone with a spoken-word introduction; "And I am freaking out in the middle of the street with the complete conviction of someone who's never had anything actually really bad happen to them, but I am committed now to the feeling".

The rest of the song reflects that very specific spiraling and uncontrollable feeling; "I don't know how it started, don't know how to stop it," she sings in the opening lines. "Suddenly, I'm dancing to imaginary music". With increasing urgency throughout, she reiterates the lines, "I just kept spinnin' and I danced myself to death".

Florence elaborated on this metaphor in an interview with Radio X. She said, "The beginning is the description of a panic attack...you feel completely overtaken by something no one else can see or hear... A lot of the record is about dancing with anxiety." Florence later added, "The stress and pressure of life building up so much that you would just dance until you drop...I related to it in terms of compulsivity to perform...it feels like this endless dance, you're never satisfied."

A recurring motif in Florence's songwriting that has always stood out to me is the way she writes about the state of music and the industry with such poignancy and unfiltered honesty. She poses an important question in the song's bridge; "You said that rock and roll is dead, but is that just because it has not been resurrected in your image?"

That line is one of my favorite lyrics ever written, capturing the double standards that are still so present in rock music, especially for women. She delivers it with such a clever edge aimed at the pretentious critics who insist rock music is dead simply because it no longer looks the way they expect it to. Florence, of course, is the embodiment of a rock star herself, a true visionary who has been reshaping the genre in her own image for well over a decade. She follows that lyric with such a funny and self-aware quip; "Like if Jesus came back, but in a beautiful dress and all the evangelicals were like, 'Oh, yes'".

This confrontation and questioning who gets to be taken seriously in the music industry, and who gets dismissed is a motif that she's explored many times over the years, especially throughout Dance Fever. A notable connection comes from another one of my favorite songs she's ever written off of her 2025 album Everybody Scream, with a song called "One of the Greats". It is another very important piece of cultural commentary on the double standards female artists are still expected to overcome and conform to. Rooted in her own experiences in music, she opens up about these pressures with such a direct, unflinching voice.