Florence Road tell us about huge new song ‘Wish Upon You’ and being saved by Eddie Vedder
The Irish band discuss their soaring new love song, the kindness of the Pearl Jam frontman when they hit a recent crisis, and maintaining trust in their instincts as their star continues to rise
As Florence Road today share soaring new single ‘Wish Upon You’ and reveal their biggest UK and European tour dates for 2027, the Irish band have spoken to Rolling Stone UK about the track, trusting their instincts, and how Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder helped them out of a tight spot on a recent US tour.
The Wicklow-raised four-piece have been gaining significant traction over the last few years, through an indie-rock sound that is both muscular and angelic. They have also played high-profile support tours with two other bands who share those qualities – Wolf Alice and The Last Dinner Party.
‘Wish Upon You’, released today, is the biggest the band have ever sounded. Based around a soaring piano melody, the track – an uncomplicated and joy-filled ode to love – feels tailor-made for the bigger venues that the band will inhabit on their newly-announced 2027 tour.
Coming together as somewhat of an accident, ‘Wish Upon You’ was born in a frustrating logistical break while recording another separate song in the studio. “I just waddled over to the piano and started playing the arpeggio that you hear [at the start of the song],” vocalist Lily Aron remembers. “We felt so inspired by it that just kept writing that one. We [finished] the other one later, but we loved this idea so much that we just ran with it.”
Read our full interview with Florence Road about the new single, their upcoming tour and their surprise saviour Eddie Vedder after being robbed on tour in California.
SONG LINK
Hello Florence Road! You’ve just arrived back in Ireland from your first headline tour of the US – how was it?
Lily Aron [vocals]: It was genuinely incredible. We’d only done those shows with The Last Dinner Party [in the States] – we’d never done our own show, bar New York. It was really amazing to go to San Francisco and Los Angeles, and the crowd were just incredible. Every crowd, every night.
But not everything went entirely to plan, right…?
Hannah Kelly [drums]: Yeah, it’s been kind of a mental week I’m not gonna lie! I’m really glad that everything did actually happen and went to plan eventually.
Can you tell us what happened with the theft of all your equipment?
Hannah: We’d just finished our show in the Troubadour [in Los Angeles], and we were staying in Hollywood for the night. So we drove to the hotel, and normally we would always, always bring our gear in, but the hotel were like, “No, you’re okay. There’s 24-hour security”. We come back the next day and the front window [of the van] had been smashed, and the guitars and the pedal boards were taken out.
Lily: Turns out they didn’t have 24-hour security!
Hannah: When it happened, we were like, “OK, so this is the tour ended. We’re just gonna have to go home and call it a day”. But thankfully, because of the team around us, we were able to get through. Fender very kindly heard [about the robbery] and gave us guitars for the rest of the tour. There were 20 people on the phone at all times being like, ”How can we get this ready for tomorrow?!”
And how did a certain Eddie Vedder come to be a part of the story?
Lily: We went down to [Vedder’s] Ohana Festival, and we tried to do the show on the first day. Like, we tried everything. Our team worked so hard, but we just didn’t have enough time to get all of our files to Ableton and stuff. The festival very kindly gave us a slot the next day, which allowed us enough time to get ourselves ready and get our shit together.
Eddie was so nice. He heard what happened and he came into our dressing room area and was like, “Play my guitar”. He was just genuinely so kind and down to earth, and it’s his festival as well, so it just meant a lot to us. So we got to play, and it was so, so great. It was such an amazing slot to get and it felt like a silver lining of the whole situation. It even worked out better than us just showing up and playing!
You’ve toured so much now – has becoming so tight as a live band affected the new music you’re writing?
Lily: When we’re writing songs, we always think about how it’s going to feel on stage. It’s that natural urge to play it live, because we’re such a live band. Everything that we make, we just cannot wait to play live. So it was amazing when writing this song. By the end of the year we will have done 85 plus shows or something mad like that.
Tell us about how ‘Wish Upon You’ came together…
Lily: We were in a small writing room the day before we wrote the song, and we wrote this other song. We were like, “Wow, this is so great! But we would love to put live drums on it,” so we ended up going to a bigger studio that had a piano in it. That’s important to the story because if we hadn’t written the first song, we wouldn’t have written ‘Wish Upon You’, because there was no piano in the first room. We got into this room and I just like waddled over to piano and started playing the arpeggio that you hear. I just had the idea of, “Oh, what if it started and sped up and sped up and sped up, and then that’s the beginning of the song”. We felt so inspired by it that we just kept writing that one. We put drums on the other one later, but we loved this idea so much that we just ran with it.
Why did this instrumental feel like it should become a love song?
Lily: The feeling of that piano thing is such an exciting and fresh thing, and to write a love song with that just felt right. It just came naturally, and the lyrics pretty much flowed out. Love songs are always the challenging part. To write something that is sad or looking in on yourself comes easier to me because you can be dramatic and it’s fun to be like that. To try and articulate the feeling of love and loving other people without cringing yourself out is more of a challenge. You can have it within the context of a romantic partner, but also just the love and the people in your life and your family. That’s a good love song, when you can put it into any context of your life.
Do you think your taste and ambition is becoming more concentrated or more varied as you release more music? What does the next era of Florence Road sound like in your heads?
Lily: I feel like the more that we write, the more that we discover about ourselves. For me personally, I don’t think I can pinpoint a certain genre or a certain type of music that I’m inspired by – it is so broad and so wide. I feel like that’s what is so fun about our music. It can sound like a lot of different stuff.
The way that we make music is forever changing, but not too drastically different from how we started. It’s still the same joy and the same fun and excitement. We just want to get in there and write the song!
Is there more in the pipeline? Are you looking towards a debut album, perhaps?
Lily: It’s been stealing moments [but] pretty consistently. I don’t like to write when we’re on the road – our heads are in a different space. yeah, which is like performing. Obviously there’s inspiration everywhere and we’ll jot ideas down in our notes app, but to get a real pocket of time is very satisfying for us. We’re always looking for the the pockets!
Finally, tell us about your plans for the new 2027 tour – are these the types of venues that match the ambition you have for the band?
Hannah: When you’re sitting in the green room in New York for a sold out show, it does allow you to think bigger from there. We’re saying, “We can come back into even bigger venues!” It pushes you on for sure.
Lily: We love playing to big crowds. We also love playing to small crowds, but there’s something so amazing about seeing a large room of people jumping and singing all your lyrics and having that wave of noise hit you on the stage. We’ve played ‘Wish Upon You’ live three times now at the end of our American tour and we can’t wait to play it again and bring it to those stages.
Hannah: We’re always thinking about lighting, live feeds, transitions between songs. It’s so exciting to get into that, and especially with the bigger venues. It opens up so much more with what you’re able to do.
Lily: We’ve always been quite ambitious, but our ambitions have become larger the more that we do this. We’ve always been hungry, but it’s feeling like the world is our oyster more and more. Things that might have at one point seemed impossible now don’t, and I think that is quite amazing to feel that as a band. We’re inspired by our younger selves and their willingness and their hunger every single day. That just grows and grows.
Florence Road’s 2027 UK and European tour dates are:
MAY 2027
1 – Antwerp, Trix
2 – Hamburg, Mojo Club
4 – Berlin, Heimathafen Neukölln
5 – Warsaw, Hydrozagadka
6 – Prague, MeetFactory
8 – Munich, Nachtwerk
9 – Milan, Magazzini Generali
10 – Zurich, Plaza Klub
12 – Cologne, Kantine
13 – Amsterdam, Paradiso
14 – Paris, L’Élysée Montmartre
18 – Edinburgh, The Queen’s Hall
19 – Liverpool, O2 Academy
20 – Leeds, Stylus
22 – Nottingham, The Palais
23 – Cardiff, Tramshed
25 – London, O2 Kentish Town Forum
26 – London, O2 Kentish Town Forum