Mumford & Sons are an English folk rock band formed in London in 2007.[2] T… Read Full Bio ↴Mumford & Sons are an English folk rock band formed in London in 2007.[2] The band consists of Marcus Mumford (lead vocals, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, drums), Ben Lovett (vocals, keyboards, piano), and Ted Dwane (vocals, bass guitar, double bass). Banjo player Winston Marshall left the band in 2021.
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.
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.
October Skies
Mumford & Sons Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
In the silver light
I just made out
Your silhouette
Through the quickening haze
So brand it on my mind
So I don't forget
Let it shine
By my wondering eyes
Oh oh oh
You're loving yearn
Oh oh oh
I have faith in wraith
I'm blinded by the lights
Of October skies
These postcard memories
Evade my eyes
In the valley I'm free
But in the hills I soar
To your silhouette
Is gone once more
Oh oh oh
You're loving yearn
Oh oh oh
I have hope once more
The fear of whats to come
Has been crippling me
So to your silhouette
I turn once more
So brand it on my mind
So I won't forget
Let it shine, let it shine
By my wondering eyes
Oh let it shine, let it shine
By my wondering eyes
Oh oh oh
You're loving yearn
Oh oh oh
I have hope once more
I just made out
Your silhouette
Through the quickening haze
So brand it on my mind
So I don't forget
Let it shine
Oh oh oh
You're loving yearn
Oh oh oh
I have faith in wraith
I'm blinded by the lights
Of October skies
These postcard memories
Evade my eyes
In the valley I'm free
But in the hills I soar
To your silhouette
Is gone once more
Oh oh oh
You're loving yearn
Oh oh oh
I have hope once more
The fear of whats to come
Has been crippling me
So to your silhouette
I turn once more
So brand it on my mind
So I won't forget
Let it shine, let it shine
By my wondering eyes
Oh let it shine, let it shine
By my wondering eyes
Oh oh oh
You're loving yearn
Oh oh oh
I have hope once more
The song "October Skies" is a beautiful and emotional ballad by Mumford & Sons. The lyrics describe the feeling of being lost and searching for hope and love. The first stanza is about seeing someone that the singer loves in the "silver light" of the October sky. They are just a silhouette in the mist, but the memory and feeling of seeing them is etched into the singer's mind. The chorus repeats the phrase "You're loving yearn" and "I have hope once more" which suggests that their love is helping the singer to find hope and light in a dark and uncertain time.
The second verse has a parting feeling to it. The singer is free in the valley but feels like they soar in the hills, yet the silhouette of the person they love has once again disappeared. The fear of the future has been crippling and the singer turns once more to the memory of their silhouette for strength. The final stanza repeats the fear and the desire to never forget the memory that is so important to them, and the hope that they can shine once more in the light of their love.
Line by Line Meaning
In the silver light
Under the soft, glowing light
I just made out
I can see
Your silhouette
Your shadowy figure
Through the quickening haze
Through the increasingly thick fog
So brand it on my mind
Make it stick in my memory
So I don't forget
So I will always remember
Let it shine
Let it glow
By my wondering eyes
Visible to my curious gaze
Oh oh oh
Expressing intense emotion
You're loving yearn
Your strong desire for love
I have faith in wraith
I believe in the spirit or ghostly figure
I'm blinded by the lights
I can't see because of the bright lights
Of October skies
The sky of autumn
These postcard memories
These memories that feel like pictures
Evade my eyes
Escape my vision
In the valley I'm free
In the low area I feel unrestrained
But in the hills I soar
But in the high places I fly
To your silhouette
To your shadowy figure
Is gone once more
Has disappeared again
The fear of whats to come
The worry about the future
Has been crippling me
Has been preventing me from functioning
So to your silhouette
So I look to your shadowy figure
I turn once more
I return again
Oh let it shine, let it shine
Oh please glow, please glow
I have hope once more
I am optimistic again
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
To comment on or correct specific content, highlight it
More Genres
No Artists Found
More Artists
Load All
No Albums Found
More Albums
Load All
No Tracks Found
Genre not found
Artist not found
Album not found
Search results not found
Song not found
Rui Fernandes
"Oh oh oh your love endures!!! oh oh oh I have faith for the rest"
"Oh oh oh your love endures!!! oh oh oh I have hope once more" :) :) :)
Lyrics below:
"In the silver light
I just made out
Your silhouette
Through the quickening haze
So brand it on my mind
So I don't forget
Let it shine
On my wandering eyes
Ooh, your love endures
Ooh, I have faith for the rest
I'm blinded by the lights
Of October skies
These postcard memories
Evade my eyes
And in the valley I'm free
But in the hills I soar
'Til your silhouette
Is gone once more
Ooh, your love endures
Ooh, I have hope once more
The fear of what's to come
Has been crippling me
So to your silhouette
I turn once more
So brand it on my mind
So I won't forget
Let it shine, let it shine
By my wandering eyes
Oh, let it shine, let it shine
By my wandering eyes
Ooh, your love endures
Ooh, I have hope once more"
Kevin Simmons-Mead
I am such a fan of Mumford... and this song is just another reminder of why. Bravo, guys.
Elena P
This piece crept up on me. First I was taken with the music, and then found myself hearing the lyrics in my head at the most unexpected times.
DuduEspoir
'The fear of what's to come has been crippling me'
this part always gets me
Ines Aliberti
My dad died October 17, but October is my favorite month. Despite everything, I will try to be happy. This song warms my heart, I don't want to cry.
Khalina Eaton
My dad died on October 27th.... he was only 27. I'm now 27 + this makes me cry in a devastated but okay way the pain is real and I'm embrace it.
Duca Dadi
And why do you need to share it with strangers?
Huw Cresswell
Why not share one's connection to a song such as this?
Kevin Simmons-Mead
@Duca Dadi Hey, it got to me, so I appreciate the openness and honesty. We're all connected, remember that...
Alberto Lunardi
@Kevin Simmons-Mead I honestly think there're tons of way to be connected, without to share a mourning with strangers. Death of loved ones is such a mystical private part of everyone's life, that I think it should be lived intimately, to be truly valued with honor. Anyway, this is my opinion, my question would not be as aggressive as I recognize it seems 1 year later.
Peace to all
Leah
These lyric videos for Delta are stunning. Hope to see you perform live one day. Thank you <3