Mumford & Sons have released four studio albums: Sigh No More (2009), Babel (2012), Wilder Mind (2015), and Delta (2018). Sigh No More peaked at number two on the UK Albums Chart and the Billboard 200 in the US, with Babel and Wilder Mind both debuting at number one in the UK and US, the former becoming the fastest-selling rock album of the decade and leading to a headline performance at Glastonbury Festival in 2013. The band has also issued two live albums: Live at Shepherd's Bush Empire (2011) and The Road to Red Rocks (2012).
Mumford & Sons were formed in December 2007 by multi-instrumentalists Marcus Mumford, Ben Lovett, Winston Marshall and Ted Dwane. Band members play acoustic guitar, drums, keyboard instruments, bass guitar, and traditional folk instruments such as banjo, mandolin and resonator guitar. The band name originates from the fact that Marcus Mumford was the most visible member, organizing the band and their performances. Lovett indicated that the name was meant to invoke the sense of an "antiquated family business name".
A handful of similar bands were increasing their visibility in West London around the same time, giving rise to the label "West London folk scene". Mumford downplays that characterisation as an exaggeration—Mumford & Sons and a few other folk acts just happened to be operating in the same general area at the time. In an interview with the Herald Sun, Marcus Mumford said, "It's not folk really. Well, some of it is, and it's certainly not a scene. Someone got over-excited about a few bands who live in a hundred-mile radius and put it in a box to sell it as a package. It's a community, not a scene. It's not exclusive." Having developed in the same musical and cultural environment, Mumford & Sons' sound has been compared to that of artists such as Noah and the Whale, Johnny Flynn and Laura Marling, whose backing band had included Marshall, Mumford, and Dwane.
In early 2008 the band began working with manager Adam Tudhope, who, as part of management company Everybody's, also represents Keane and Laura Marling. It was through Tudhope's connection that Mumford & Sons were exposed to their future A&R at Island, Louis Bloom, who began monitoring the band. Bloom told HitQuarters that they were still at a fledgling state and not yet ready for a label deal: "There was no one there for it, just a few friends, and they needed time to develop. Over the next six months I kept going to see them and they were literally picking up fans every time."
In February 2008, the band completed an extensive UK tour with support from Alessi's Ark, Sons of Noel and Adrian, Peggy Sue and others. June 2008 marked the band's first appearance at the Glastonbury Festival. They also toured Australia with Laura Marling, whose disinclination to interact with audiences encouraged Mumford into the spotlight. The experience helped inform his attitude towards Mumford & Sons audiences, which is to interact frequently and to try to create a comfortable, casual atmosphere. Mumford & Sons' first project was an EP entitled Love Your Ground which took a year to complete and was released in November 2008 on Chess Club Records.
The band began by using bluegrass and folk instrumentation, with the core instruments of acoustic guitar, banjo, piano and a double bass, played with a rhythmic style based in alternative rock and folk. In the documentary Big Easy Express, Marcus Mumford recognizes the Old Crow Medicine Show influence: "I first heard Old Crow’s music when I was, like, 16, 17, and that really got me into, like, folk music, bluegrass. I mean, I’d listened to a lot of Dylan, but I hadn’t really ventured into the country world so much. So Old Crow were the band that made me fall in love with country music." Mumford acknowledges that "the band inspired them to pick up the banjo and start their now famous country nights in London." Ketch Secor, Old Crow front-man, concurs: "Those boys took the message and ran with it.
Much of Mumford & Sons' lyrical content has a strong literary influence, its debut album name deriving from William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing. The track "Sigh No More" includes lines from the play such as Serve God love me and mend, For man is a giddy thing, and One foot in sea and one on shore. The title of the song "Roll Away Your Stone" is an allusion to Macbeth; the song includes the line Stars hide your fires/ And these here are my desires which borrows and pares down Macbeth's line in act 1, scene 4: Stars, hide your fires,/ Let not light see my black and deep desires. Additionally, "The Cave" includes several references to The Odyssey, in particular the sirens that Odysseus encounters on his journey home. The song also contains many references to G.K. Chesterton's book, St. Francis of Assisi, in which Chesterton uses Plato's Cave as a way of explaining how St. Francis views the world from God's perspective. "Little Lion Man" appears to be a retelling in dramatic monologue form of Chretien de Troyes' Yvain, the Knight of the Lion, which is the story of a knight who goes mad after betraying a promise to his wife to return to her. Both "Timshel" and "Dust Bowl Dance" draw heavily from the John Steinbeck novels Of Mice and Men, East of Eden and The Grapes of Wrath.
The band's change in sound on their third album was described by Lovett as a "natural departure." At the end of the Babel tour Winston Marshall traded his banjo for electric guitar in sound checks and Mumford started playing more drums as the band jammed on heavy instrumentals and even some Radiohead tunes. Banjo does not feature on the record, an instrument that had become synonymous with the band. NME reported that the band's sound is "More expansive than ever and decidedly heavier, thanks to the shift in instrumentation." The group also employed a full drumkit instead of kick drum. "We've had our standard line-up of instruments for the last six years and we felt like that was our palette, [but] we started picking up other stuff," said Lovett. "It's a very natural departure from some of that rootsier stuff."
Lovett told NME that working with James Ford for Wilder Mind was part of trying something new. "We felt a need for change. Not from Markus [Dravs], but he was so closely attached to those first two records that as we had taken that time off, we wanted to try doing something new. It felt like, if we do our third record with Markus, does that mean we do our ninth and 10th records with Markus? At some point you have to try different things, as we collectively felt like it was time to try other stuff. Markus knows that we might well make the next record with him. We definitely haven't broken up [with Dravs], we're just playing the field!".
The band have won a number of music awards throughout their career, with Sigh No More earning the band the Brit Award for Best British Album in 2011 and six overall Grammy Award nominations. The live performance at the 2011 Grammy ceremony with Bob Dylan and The Avett Brothers led to a surge in popularity for the band in the US. The band received eight total Grammy nominations for Babel and won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year. The band also won the Brit Award for Best British Group in 2013.
Hold On
Mumford & Sons Lyrics
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I can't promise you that I won't let you down
And I
I can't promise you that I will be the only one around
When your hope falls down
But we're young
Open flowers in the windy fields of this war-torn world
And love
I ran away
I could not take the burden of both me and you
It was too fast
Casting love on me as if it were a spell I could not break
When it was a promise I could not make
But what if I was wrong?
But hold on to what you believe in the light
When the darkness has robbed you of all your sight
And now this land
Means less and less to me without you breathing through its trees
At every turn
The water runs away from me and the halo disappears
And the hole when you're not near
So what if I was wrong?
But hold on to what you believe in the light
When the darkness has robbed you of all your sight
So hold on to what you believed in the light
Mumford & Sons's song "Hold On to What You Believe" is a powerful ballad that speaks to the struggle of holding on to one's beliefs in the face of doubt and uncertainty. The song starts with Marcus Mumford admitting that he can't promise his loved one that he won't let them down, nor can he say that he will be the only one there for them when things get tough. However, he follows that up by expressing the idea that they are young, like "open flowers in the windy fields of this war-torn world," and that they still have love to hold onto, even though the world can be a dark and difficult place.
The second verse finds Mumford questioning whether he was wrong to leave his loved one behind, admitting that he couldn't handle the burden of their relationship. But he implores his loved one to hold on to what they believe, despite the darkness that surrounds them. In the end, Mumford realizes that the world means less to him without his loved one by his side, and that the darkness only intensifies when they are not together.
One of the most moving aspects of this song is the way Mumford's voice soars and dips, alternating between hauntingly beautiful falsetto and soulful, gritty sincerity. The lyrics are also incredibly poignant, particularly the repeated refrain of "Hold on to what you believe in the light, when the darkness has robbed you of all your sight." This message of hope and resilience is one that is particularly relevant in today's tumultuous world.
Line by Line Meaning
I can't promise you that I won't let you down
I cannot guarantee that I will not disappoint you
I can't promise you that I will be the only one around
I cannot guarantee that I will be the only one here for you
When your hope falls down
When your optimism diminishes
But we're young
But we are still in our youth
Open flowers in the windy fields of this war-torn world
We are vulnerable beings in this battered world
And love
And the concept of love
This city breathes the plague of loving things more than their creators
This metropolitan suffers from people loving their creations more than their creator
I ran away
I escaped
I could not take the burden of both me and you
I could not endure the responsibility of both myself and you
It was too fast
It was too swift
Casting love on me as if it were a spell I could not break
Displaying love at me as if it were a binding magic that I could not undo
When it was a promise I could not make
Despite its ardent appeal, it was a vow that I was not capable of fulfilling
But what if I was wrong?
Nevertheless, what if my actions were incorrect?
But hold on to what you believe in the light
But have faith in what you believe when life gets easier
When the darkness has robbed you of all your sight
When you can no longer see amidst despair and distress
And now this land
Currently, this land
Means less and less to me without you breathing through its trees
The world is less meaningful to me without your vitality embracing it
At every turn
At every twist and turn
The water runs away from me and the halo disappears
My good fortune is eluding me and my radiance fades
And the hole when you're not near
And the emptiness that ensues when you are not with me
So hold on to what you believed in the light
So cling on to your beliefs when life is easier
Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group
Written by: BENJAMIN WALTER DAVID LOVETT, EDWARD JAMES MILTON DWANE, MARCUS OLIVER JOHNSTONE MUMFORD, WINSTON AUBREY ALADAR MARSHALL
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
@Beeliciously
I want to put every Mumford song ever written on a playlist, go hiking and get lost in the hills
@kimberlygilpin7900
I do to , getting lost ,I'm loss inside ,
@porkbandit1107
You doing ok nowadays?
@kylejayden3825
instablaster
@bmw328i8
It’s the best feeling…
@geoo6691
Welp let's get lost together
@trevorhurst5029
Mumford is like a emotion more than anything deeper than anything. It's familiar tune means more to me than things I have not learned how to explain. like my soul knows this from before the mind was assigned to this body.
@CaramelSauce24
trevor hurst wow, same here
@Devonviolet1979
Exactly this!
@Daphne70
❤❤❤