Useless Magic: Lyrics and Poetry

I'm disappointed because I thought we would have a more expansive originally, never been seen before section for poetry. If you want a gorgeous coffee book of every song she's written before her recent album, Dance Fever, this is for you. But I really, really wanted more poetry. Otherwise, the artwork is BEAUTIFUL and you won't dislike it unless you hoped for a longer section of new poems.

It was absolutely gorgeous. I'm a huge fan of Florence and the Machine and I loved this book so much. Like several other people said it is just a collection of lyrics and photos with some poetry but I thought it was fantastic.

My partner loved this as a gift

Let me start by saying: I'm a huge Florence fan. I've had this book an hour and I've read all of it. 95% of it is song lyrics-- JUST song lyrics-- interspersed with a few polaroids and doodles. There's no commentary on anything, if that's what you're hoping for.The only section that will include anything you haven't seen is the last sliver of the book, "poetry". Florence writes poems on the occasion that she can't fit something into a song. Some of them are ok. Some of them are... not great. More doodles and hotel notepad images follow.Now, there is one benefit to having everything right in front of you: you finally get a big, cohesive picture of what this woman has been screaming about for a decade. She has a bad history of relationships. She's seems to be a very toxic person. You can see how this affects her as an artist (and I hope she's getting help and getting better). Her lyrics move from being extremely metaphoric to much more literal across her albums and tell a story of her becoming more open with herself. You don't need the book for this, of course, because the music has been there the whole time. The book just makes the vision a little clearer, especially with the sprinkle of poetry at the end.Oh! And one more thing! If, like me, you had always been trying to figure out what the flock she was saying in "Seven Devils" (every lyrics site on the internet was just as confused!), you finally have an answer! It is as follows:You can't keep it outIt's coming through the wallsTo devastate your heartAnd to take your soulFor what has been doneCannot be undoneIn the eagle's eyeIn the evensongBottom line:If you're hoping for some awesome magical inside view into Florence's psyche and what the lyrics mean... This isn't it. Her Facebook page will give you more than this book. But if you want to clarify the big picture and get a better look at her work as an artist, or you just want something for your collection, get the book.

Came so fast and is beautiful and great packaging. The only tell was a small red dot on the edge of the book. Otherwise you’d think it was new right off the shelf.

Florence Welch has always been a bookworm and scribble artist who journals frequently, and Useless Magic collects many of the early scraps that eventually became full songs. For pre-2018 work, these are largely charming sketches for hardcore fans to cherish, placed alongside lyrics for every album (none of FATM"s albums have ever come with proper lyric booklets, so this is nice to have). For the High as Hope tracks, those songs were more directly taken from Welch's poetry, and you'll see the creative process at work. This isn't master poetry or anything, and Welch is still stronger as a songwriter than a poet, but this is a nice gift to display for fans.

If you are a fan of Florence + the machine this books is an absolute must. The imagery and the aesthetic of the book does give big Florence vibes and it was nice to read the lyrics of old favorites as well as the poems

I purchased this book after seeing Florence, live, last October. It's simply stunning. The way it's pulled together is fascinating-- hand written lyrics (covered with rewrites & scribbles), typed poems, little notes & cartoons doodled onto hotel stationary... I found myself feeling guilty, somehow, like I was reading Florence's diary. And at the same time, I would stare at a page wondering why she'd blackened out the name on the hotel stationary, who the person was, had they broken her heart... All in all, a great purchase & well worth the money for any fan of F.A.T.M.

This is a must have for any FATM fan.

Her poetry (which comes at the 80%mark) is fine but I didn’t need to read her lyrics for the first chunk of the book, as they’re already available and much better in song. I also wish I hadn’t bought a book full of oddly cropped art by other people. Why was there so much Waterhouse and Klimt? To set the mood? Why was there no context to some of the random photos? I struggled to find any greater purpose to this. It felt chucked together, less curated than most peoples instagrams.Big fans of hers will love this but I was bitterly disappointed.

Llegó en excelentes condiciones.

“THEN LIGHTNING STRUCK / NOW I’M TOTALLY F****D.” I had the supreme joy of reading Florence Welch’s lyrics and poetry, ‘Useless Magic’, a couple of days early. What a monumental gift this book is. The lyrics-by-album serve as a retrospective, a chronology of the artist’s growth over ten years; lyrics which (excepting High As Hope) have been subjective and disputed. Laid out on the page there is no denying the sheer power and poetry of Florence’s song-writing; never does a lyric become a dead thing, flattened to the printed page. And what a joy to read through and discover new meanings. The book is stunningly packaged, complete with photographs and artwork, of/by her and her influences, as well as sketches/notes from her notebooks over the years, seeds planted to bloom much later. But it is the poetry I was most excited for, and most enjoyed. Though only sixteen poems in all, it feels like plenty, with each poem its own marvel, Florence’s voice confident and contemplative. In ‘Oh You’re A Real Man’, a verse in ‘Patricia’ is altered to ask “how many have to die / so that you can feel loved?”, while in ‘Rage’ Florence mourns the “age of rage” we find ourselves living in, the seeming obsolescence of softness and compassion. The inadvertent triptych of ‘Love Hospital’, ‘Wedding’ and ‘Honeymoon’ make a really stunning moment of both circularity and progression, while the insistence of ‘American Mother’ and its personal introspection provide another perspective to Florence’s near-romanticised processing of the world. ‘Monarch Butterflies’ handles the problem of putting written lyrics and poems into the world, “confined to the page so permanent”, while ‘I Guess I Won’t Write Poetry’ muses on “the blank face of god / your demon door / your own personal sad machine”. A true delight in every sense and hopefully merely a prologue of all the poetry to come.

I expected more from this, to be honest. I don't know why. But a good eighty percent is just the lyrics to her songs. I could get them free on the internet. This would probably be better as a paper book, and maybe if I felt a more personal connection to Florence Welch.Not worth it.