Emiliana Torrini - Miss Flower

“This record is written letter by letter, so the story unfolded to us letter by letter. Miss Flower completely captivated me both when I met her, and then after her death when we started to read letters and find out more about her life. Each song is inspired by a different story or person that we discovered. All the letters were to her, so we never got her side. I hated the fact she was voiceless on this record until right at the end of recording the record, Zoe found a love poem of hers to a man who was her longest love, to whom she stayed close for decades even after she left him at the altar. These discoveries were thrilling. I stayed in Geraldine Flower’s flat in Chiswick while writing the record with Simon Byrt, my long-time collaborator and husband of Zoe. They lived in the same house and the studio is in the garden, so I was submerged in her surroundings.

Miss Flower lived adventurously and, on her terms, she led with something other than marriage and convention, a fearless loyalty to her truth. She had nine proposals and never married. Men were obsessed with her, and some letters are of that heartbreak, some of great lust, some reference espionage, and secret meetings and others are very humorous.

I wanted to make a pop/electronic record but with the vocal intimacy of Leonard Cohen’s I’m Your Man record. It felt counterintuitive to do a pop/electronic record to letters, it was interesting to me and after much focusing it started to feel more and more natural. Making the record was a happy, mysterious journey. I felt like we were woven together somehow, like we were characters in a book being read out-loud somewhere.

The record cover is a picture of me and Miss Flower sitting together in a cafe. Zoe found this picture but, in my place, sat a handsome man. We had the man taken out and me put in his place. I felt we needed to share that space together. It was very hard to say goodbye to the letters, and the creative space it gave me, although I remind myself the journey is not finished. I am looking forward to telling this incredible story to an audience.”