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 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 received generally positive reviews from music critics, with Welch drawing comparisons to the likes of Kate Bush and Fiona Apple.

[citation needed] In 2007, Welch fronted the hip hop-influenced group Ashok, recording an early version of "Kiss with a Fist", titled "Happy Slap", for their debut studio album, Plans.

[6] Distraught but also inspired from a recently failed relationship, Welch recorded with "enthusiasm over skills", stating, "I'm quite glad I never learned to play the guitar, because I think I'd write songs that were more classically structured.

Welch, however, began expanding upon the crude punk style which influenced "Kiss with a Fist" by listening to more contemporary music, particularly Arcade Fire's debut album Funeral (2004).

[10] The influence of the recordings would manifest itself on the concept she had devised for Lungs, which, according to Welch, was a "scrapbook of the past five years... it's about guilt, fear, love, death, violence, nightmares, [and] dreams".

[11] Ultimately, the majority of Welch's earlier self-penned compositions were rejected for the album—except "Kiss with a Fist" and "Between Two Lungs"—because they did not mesh well with the album's themes.

[12] Fortunately for the group, they rehearsed and improvised some of the material in the relaxed setting of Summers' studio, allowing Welch to refine the tribal drumming backdropping Lungs's tracks, most notably "Dog Days Are Over".

[13] Florence and the Machine recorded Lungs in the United Kingdom with five different producers—Paul Epworth, James Ford, Stephen Mackey, Eg White, and Charlie Hugall.

[15][16][17][18][19][20][21] The imagery of Lungs, featuring a style derived from the Ante-Donatello Brotherhood, was handled by two of Welch's friends: photographer Tom Beard and art director Tabitha Denholm, who are partners at the studio Partizan.

[33] The band made a guest appearance in the 7 February 2011 episode of Gossip Girl, titled "Panic Roommate", where they performed an acoustic rendition of "Cosmic Love".

[45] James Christopher Monger of AllMusic praised it as "one of the most musically mature and emotionally mesmerizing albums of 2009" and stated, "With an arsenal of weaponry that included the daring musicality of Kate Bush, the fearless delivery of Sinéad O'Connor, and the dark, unhinged vulnerability of Fiona Apple, the London native crafted a debut that not only lived up to the machine-gun spray of buzz that heralded her arrival, but easily surpassed it.

"[48] Spin's Melissa Maerz stated, "From the way she sings, in big gulps and Teen Wolf growls, to the mystical art-rock ballads she bedazzles with sleigh bells, harps, and choirs, there's enough drama here for a Broadway musical.

"[53] Rolling Stone's Jon Dolan expressed that "[t]he best bits feel like being chased through a moonless night by a sexy moor witch.

"[16] Slant Magazine's Nick Day referred to the band's music as "particularly sensitive to studio gloss" and praised Welch's singing as "a fine balance between elegance and frenzy.

"[54] In a review for The Guardian, Dave Simpson viewed that Welch "has created a sonic labyrinth of xylophones, percussion, Gregorian chants and werewolves.

"[49] Jamie Fullerton of NME commended the work of producers James Ford and Paul Epworth, writing that they "create epic cauldron-swirls of Terminator-theme drums, Massive Attack atmospherics and twinkle-eye harp matched by Florence's grappling of skyward choruses", but found that "with the likes of 'I'm Not Calling You A Liar' and 'Howl' boasting similarly windy production yet no identifiable tunes the results sound aimless—if harmless.

[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.