Florence + The Machine

Welch has called Patti Smith her "North Star," and in 2018 she wrote "Patricia," from High as Hope, as a direct tribute. "Her writing was like a blueprint," Welch told Rolling Stone. "She seems to bring such reverence to the act of living that I find so inspiring. I could just read her write about her morning coffee for pages." The two later met at a New York restaurant — Smith had already heard the song and sent Welch a kind note — a moment Welch still calls "magical."

listen: upstream & heresource: Rolling Stone — Florence Welch on Sobriety, Embracing Loneliness and Loving Patti Smith (Patti Smith influence, "Patricia") ↗share

1975

GloriaPatti Smith

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2025

One of the GreatsFlorence + The Machine

listen forCue Smith's "Gloria," the opening track on her 1975 album Horses, and hear how she recites the first lines flatly, almost spoken, before the band detonates into song. "One of the Greats," from 2025's Everybody Scream, does the same thing — Welch reads her lyrics straight off the page in one take before the track swells behind her. The song's video restages photographer Claude Gassian's 1976 shots of Smith on the Horses tour, so the debt is visible as well as audible.

Welch has been open about her fandom: "I'm pretty obsessed with Stevie Nicks, from her style to her voice," she told Huffington Post in 2010. "I like watching her on YouTube and her old performances, the way she moves and everything." The devotion is on record, literally — Florence + The Machine has performed Fleetwood Mac's "Silver Springs," the song Nicks wrote and sang, on stage more than once, treating it less like an obligatory cover than a direct tribute to the woman who wrote it.

listen: upstream & heresource: Rolling Stone — Hear Florence and the Machine Cover Fleetwood Mac's 'Silver Springs' (Stevie Nicks influence) ↗share

1976

Silver SpringsStevie Nicks

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2016

Silver Springs (Fleetwood Mac cover, live)Florence + The Machine

listen forPlay Nicks's original "Silver Springs" and catch the low, half-spoken rasp she drops into on the bridge, aimed at a departing lover. Then hear Florence + The Machine's live cover of the same song: Welch keeps Nicks's phrasing close to the original but pushes it up into her own fluttering vibrato, occasionally slipping into what Rolling Stone called "a light twang as she channels" Nicks — the same wounded confrontation, sung a register higher.

Welch didn't hear Kate Bush until she was twenty. She'd been, she said, "very much into the British indie scene, all guitar music," until "artsy friends" pointed her from the Futureheads' cover of "Hounds of Love" to Bush's original. Getting into Bush, she said, "was so revelatory... like a new world is being opened up. There's no one else like her." Critics had already been making the comparison for years — a Guardian review of one of her first festival sets called her "a young Kate Bush," before she'd even released an album.

listen: upstream & heresource: Atlanta Journal-Constitution — Florence Welch on Elvis, Kate Bush, 'Dance Fever' (Kate Bush influence) ↗share

1978

Wuthering HeightsKate Bush

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2010

Cosmic LoveFlorence + The Machine

listen forCue Bush's "Wuthering Heights" and listen for the moment her voice suddenly vaults out of a conversational verse into that high, keening, nearly operatic chorus — a leap most pop singers wouldn't attempt. Florence's "Cosmic Love" pulls the same trick: a hushed verse detonates into a soaring hook over a huge, cathedral-sized arrangement, Welch's voice launching skyward in exactly the spot Bush's does, both turning a private ache into something closer to weather.