Florence + The Machine Contribute Song to Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children

By Joe Allen  |  August 25, 2016 | 4:46pm
Images via Raphael Dias/Getty, Island Records
Music News Florence + The Machine

Tim Burton is getting some help from Florence + the Machine on his latest effort. Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children will feature a song titled “I Wish That You Were Here” from Florence Welch and company.

The song will serve as the end-title track for the film, and hopes to work as a bookend for the film’s messages. In a statement, Welch described “I Wish That You Were Here” as “a song about the idea that love is a journey and a risk.”

Burton collaborated with Florence personally for the track. Welch was a longtime fan both of the books by Ransom Riggs that Miss Peregrine’s is based on and of Burton. “I’ve always been a huge fan of Tim Burton’s,” said Welch. “We have a very similar sensibility. It’s the kind of dark, dark romance of his work—so beautiful and whimsical, but with an element of darkness to it. That’s something that I always try to achieve in my work, too.”

Welch and Burton made natural partners, and the rest came fairly quickly. Welch said:

I knew we would get along really well working together and we did. I feel like we’re coming from a similar place of quite frantic imaginations trying to get the words out before the pictures in our heads disappear. He feels like a kindred spirit. I actually sent him a note about six years ago. I was in Australia on tour there for the first time and visited an exhibition of all his work. I wanted to leave him a message and all I had on me was an x-ray of my hand, as I had just broken my finger. So I wrote on the x-ray and gave it to the gallery to pass on and never knew if he got it. When we met for the first time, he told me it’s been hanging up in his office ever since.

“I Wish That You Were Here” can be purchased on Friday, Aug. 26. Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children hits theaters on Sept. 30, which gives audiences about a month to catch the Florence + The Machine track beforehand. Check it out below, and beneath that, watch a TV spot for the film that features the song.

 
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