Lungs (album)
Lungs is the debut studio album by English indie rock band Florence and the Machine, released on 3 July 2009 by Island Records. After working on various projects, Florence Welch formed a band which included Robert Ackroyd, Chris Hayden, Mark Saunders, Tom Monger, and former collaborator Isabella Summers. The album features production from James Ford, Paul Epworth, Stephen Mackey, Eg White and Charlie Hugall, with additional production by band member Isabella Summers. The album has been reissued several times: an expanded version titled Between Two Lungs (2010), a digital EP subtitled The B-Sides (2011), and a Tenth Anniversary Edition (2019).
Lungs
3 July 2009
2007–2009
46:11
Lungs received generally positive reviews from music critics, with Welch drawing comparisons to the likes of Kate Bush and Fiona Apple. It appeared on several year-end critics' lists in late 2009. The album won the award for British Album of the Year at the Brit Awards. Commercially, Lungs reached number one in Poland and the United Kingdom, and number 14 in the US Billboard 200, selling over 3 million copies worldwide.
The album was supported by six singles, all of which were supplemented by accompanying music videos. "Kiss with a Fist" peaked at 51 in the United Kingdom while "Dog Days Are Over" and "Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)" also charted in Australia and Belgium. Three further singles followed the release of the album, "Drumming Song", a cover of the song "You've Got the Love", and "Cosmic Love". Their cover of the Source and Candi Staton song became the group's first top-10 entry. To promote the album, Florence and the Machine embarked on the Lungs Tour between 2008 and 2011. A live album from this concert was released in 2010, titled Live at the Wiltern.
Commercial performance[edit]
Lungs debuted at number two on the UK Albums Chart (behind Michael Jackson's 2005 compilation album The Essential Michael Jackson), selling 63,020 copies in its first week[66]—the second highest amount for a debut album in 2009, after Susan Boyle's I Dreamed a Dream.[67][68] On 17 January 2010, after spending 28 consecutive weeks in the top 40,[69] the album topped the UK chart for the first time, selling 51,005 copies.[70] It spent a second consecutive week atop the chart, with 42,359 copies sold.[71] On 8 March 2019, Lungs was certified sextuple platinum by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI),[72] and had sold 1,813,557 copies in the United Kingdom by August 2019.[73]
Following the band's performance of "Dog Days Are Over" at the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards, Lungs jumped from number 44 to number 14 on the US Billboard 200 with sales of 21,000 copies, an increase of 165% from the previous week.[74] The album was certified double platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) on 25 June 2018.[75] It had sold 1,142,000 copies in the United States as of February 2013.[76] Worldwide, Lungs had sold over three million copies as of November 2011.[77]