"Something literally switched in my head at 36" UK artist Florrie on the power of caring less
The singer-songwriter and drummer talks people-pleasing, the women who championed her and trusting her gut.
My chat with Florrie feels less like an interview and more like catching up with a friend who’s moved abroad, like we haven’t spoken in a while, but the conversation slips effortlessly into place - warm and easy.
Over the past two decades, Florrie has built a career that’s spanned both sides of the music industry. First making her name as the drummer behind some of British pop’s biggest acts - including Kylie Minogue, Girls Aloud and Pet Shop Boys through the legendary Xenomania production house - before stepping into the spotlight herself as a singer-songwriter.
She’s has just announced her latest album, Magic For A While, due for release in October, with new single The Times already out in the world.
As we settle into our video chat, she’s every bit as down-to-earth as she is accomplished.
I begin by suggesting it must be a good feeling to finally be at the point of sharing the album with the world.
“Yeah. This album journey was quite a solitary experience for me. I really enjoyed that actually, I really loved just keeping it close to my chest, really believing in what I’d made without letting anything external influence me.”
Do you think you may be at a point in your life where you're much more comfortable doing that?
“I don’t know what happened to me last year,” she laughs. “But I turned 36 and something literally switched in my head.”
For someone who describes herself as a “lifelong people pleaser”, the shift has been significant.
“I do think it’s an age thing. It’s a great feeling. The older I get, the less I care - in a good way - about what other people think of me. Because I am someone that throughout my life has really cared.”
Florrie wrote the album during a period of uncertainty while living in Los Angeles.
“I was in this transition period of not knowing whether to stay or whether to come back,” she says. “It got me thinking about all these other times in my life where you’ve chosen to go down one path and it’s led you somewhere. But what if you had taken another one?”
This, she explains, is the “overarching theme of the record”.
So where are you finding magic in her own life right now?
“First of all, I love nature,” she says. “The older I get, the more I appreciate being quiet.”
“Seeing my best friend become a mum. That’s really magical. And she’s nailing it. I mean, she doesn’t feel like she is, but she is nailing it. I think I see a lot of magical things around me in a really nice way.”
It’s an answer that says a lot about where Florrie is right now. Less concerned with chasing validation and more interested in appreciating the people and moments around her.
Throughout her life and career, Florrie has been inspired by different women.
“I started this job at Xenomania as the drummer. It was this big house in the countryside, there were like 30 people there, musicians, writers, all different ages. But the lady who ran it was called Miranda Cooper.”
“Before then [the people working around me] were all guys and bands really… I guess there wasn’t anyone in my sort of everyday life who I looked up to.”
“But Miranda was one of the most prolific female songwriters in the UK. She was lovely and she really empowered everyone else around her,” Florrie says. “Miranda was a real leader.”
“I was actually quite nervous of her,” Florrie admits of first meeting Miranda. Looking back now, she sees it differently, remembering Miranda as a “really big” role model in her early years of being a musician.
Closer to home, however, her biggest inspiration has always been her mum, a single parent who ran her own business. “I’m so close to my mum. I speak to her once, if not twice a day, every single day,” Florrie says. “In my head she just balanced everything. She just made it all work. I don’t think she really feels like that, but she was a big inspiration growing up. She’s just my absolute champion.”
Another woman who changed the course of her life was Cassandra Gracey, who spotted something special in a young drummer she’d met briefly in a lawyer’s waiting room.
Months later, Cassandra called with an opportunity.
“She called me maybe six months later and said, ‘This is going to be really random, but I got your number because I remember you from this lawyer’s office. I thought you had a really sort of special energy. And I’ve got a friend who’s looking for a drummer to be part of this team.’ She was amazing. She really championed me as well.”
That connection became Florrie’s introduction to Xenomania.
Although music remains heavily male-dominated behind the scenes, Florrie considers herself fortunate that her earliest experiences in the industry were unusually inclusive.
“Being part of Xenomania, I was very protected from the wider sexism in the music industry,” she says. “It was an incredible environment to have the first ten years of my musical life in.”
In fact, Florrie says she didn’t encounter much sexism at all during the first decade of her career. “It’s only the last six or seven years where I’ve seen it.”
When it did happen, it came as a surprise.
“I was actually shocked when I first experienced very blatant sexism, where someone refused to talk to me and directed everything at a male colleague, even though it was something that I dealt with.”
The confidence she’s developed in recent years has also changed the way she sees herself.
“When I first started out, I definitely felt like I had to look and be a certain way,” Florrie says. “I felt like I had to be thin and pretty and make sure I was always wearing makeup every day.”
Now?
“I literally couldn’t care less.”
So what has changed?
“I trust myself more. I’ve got more confidence in my own decisions. When I make a decision now, I don’t need external validation. I was a real worrier back in my twenties. Whereas now I’m just feeling a lot more sure of myself and just a lot calmer in everyday life.”
I ask her if “stop worrying” would be the advice she’d give to her younger self?
“The thing is, you just can’t say ‘stop worrying’. Does it ever work? Does it? No.”
“I’d probably just say: trust your gut a bit more.”
“There were a lot of times where I had quite a definite feeling about something, and some label exec would be like, ‘No, that’s a stupid idea’. And I would think he must know better.”
Now, Florrie knows that’s not the case.
“Creatively, you know yourself better than anyone else ultimately.”
As our conversation comes to an end, I ask how she hopes people will listen to Magic For A While.
“I would actually love for people to just sit with it. Just them and the record.”
The album is introspective, she says, and deserves a quiet moment to absorb it.
“And then tell everyone about it.”
Florrie’s single The Times is out now
The full album Magic for a while is out in October 2026
