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.
The Enemy
Mumford & Sons Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
It's easier; It's kinder
Tell me not of heartbreak
It plagues my soul, plagues my soul
We will meet back on this road
Nothing gaining, truth be told
But I am not the enemy
It isn't me, the enemy
But I came and I was nothing
And time will give us nothing
So why did you choose to lean on
A man you knew was falling?
Give me hope in silence
It's easier; It's kinder
Tell me not of heartbreak
It plagues my soul, plagues my soul
And bury me beside you
I have no hope
In solitude
And the world will follow
To the earth down below
But I came and I was nothing
And time will give us nothing
So why did you choose to lean on
A man you knew was falling?
The lyrics of Mumford and Sons' The Enemy are reflective and melancholic, exploring feelings of hopelessness and betrayal. The song begins with a plea for hope in silence, indicating a need for comfort but also a desire to avoid discussing the pain of heartbreak. The lyrics suggest that heartbreak has deeply affected the singer's soul, leaving them feeling plagued and lost. Despite this, the song expresses a sense of determination, with the lyrics "we will meet back on this road" indicating a willingness to continue down a difficult path.
The chorus of the song is particularly poignant, with a repeated phrase about the singer not being the enemy. This suggests that there may have been accusations or blame placed on the singer for what has transpired, but the repeated statement that they are not the enemy may indicate that they are innocent or that they are trying to move forward. The second verse explores the idea of betrayal, with the lyrics "why did you choose to lean on a man you knew was falling?" indicating a sense of hurt and disappointment with someone who was not supportive during a difficult time.
Overall, The Enemy is a powerful and emotional song that reflects on the complexities of human relationships and the pain that can come from heartbreak and betrayal.
Line by Line Meaning
Give me hope in silence
I need hope but I don't want to hear any false promises or reassurances
It's easier; It's kinder
Silence is better than giving me false hope that will eventually hurt me more
Tell me not of heartbreak
I don't want to hear about how much pain I might experience
It plagues my soul, plagues my soul
The thought of heartbreak troubles me deeply
We will meet back on this road
We will face the same struggles again someday
Nothing gaining, truth be told
We won't make any progress if we keep doing the same things
But I am not the enemy
I am here to help you, not cause harm
But I came and I was nothing
I arrived with nothing to offer
And time will give us nothing
Time won't change our situation unless we take action
So why did you choose to lean on
A man you knew was falling?
Why did you depend on me when you knew I was struggling myself?
And bury me beside you
I have no hope
In solitude
And the world will follow
To the earth down below
I have lost all hope and would rather be buried next to you. Death will bring us closer together and the world will also eventually join us
Contributed by Riley K. Suggest a correction in the comments below.
Asnes45
Give me hope in silence
It's easier; It's kinder
Tell me not of heartbreak
It plagues my soul, plagues my soul
We will meet back on this road
Nothing gaining, truth be told
But I am not the enemy
it isn't me, the enemy
But I came and I was nothing
And time will give us nothing
So why did you choose to lean on
A man you knew was falling?
Give me hope in silence
It's easier; It's kinder
Tell me not of heartbreak
It plagues my soul, plagues my soul
And bury me beside you
I have no hope
In solitude
And the world will follow
To the earth down below
But I came and I was nothing
And time will give us nothing
So why did you choose to lean on
A man you knew was falling?
Jack Landis
I love this so much. Everything about it resonates so heavily and fully with the themes and aesthetic of the novel itself. This movie, for whatever reason, was marketed as a romance. Lots of folks seem to think Wuthering Heights is a romance. Frankly, I hate that analysis. I think Heathcliff is a horrible, scary, abusive monster of a man, especially in the novel. And the novel, rather than being a lovely little Victorian romance like everybody seems to think it is, is a gothic horror masterpiece. It's a very human horror, which makes everything that much more visceral. And the setting is so pastoral that I would almost want to call it Southern gothic, even though it's European. It reminds me of William Faulkner a good deal, even though he came much later and was from the southern US. But it's got a very rural, pastoral feel to it, and it plays with ideas of class and (to a lesser extent) race, which Southern gothic literature is known to do. It rides a really fun, interesting line between traditional gothic and Southern gothic like no other novel I've read has done.
So, who better to include than Mumford and Sons, the British americana band? They did this fantastically. The thick English accents help establish the setting, but the americana style really lends itself to that pastoral feel. And the whole song is just so gothically arranged, too. The dark, haphazard banjo sets the tone immediately, and the tired, pained, and desperate sounding harmonies hammer it home. It's perfect.
I know I'm commenting eight years on here, but give me a pass on that. I've been thinking about this song since I discovered it, probably 2012-2013. I didn't have a YouTube account at that point (because I was a literal child), and I hadn't read Wuthering Heights by then. But there was something about this song that drew me in the moment I heard it. Some combination of the gothic qualities, the elitist folk music pioneer expedition I was on at the tender age of twelve, and the fact that I was thoroughly overwhelmed with excitement at the fact that, holy shit, my favorite band at the time had music I hadn't heard before.
Now I'm 20 years old. I've read Wuthering Heights, I have a grasp on the gothic as a concept, and I'm still incredibly invested in this expedition of mine, which is still going on (though I'm no longer an elitist about it). I wanted to come back here and just gush about this song for a bit. I hope y'all enjoyed my simple analyses of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights and Mumford and Sons' "The Enemy". This was really fun for me. And if you actually took the time to read through this whole epic-poem-length comment, thank you. I hope it wasn't the most boring thing in the world.
NoodleMari
Dame esperanza en el silencio,
Es más fácil y más amable
No me hables de desamor
que infesta mi alma, me la infesta.
Nos encontraremos en este camino,
ganando nada, la verdad sea dicha
Pero no soy el enemigo
No soy yo
Pero llegue y era nada
Y el tiempo nos dará nada
Así que por qué decidiste confiar
En un hombre que sabías decadente
Dame esperanza en el silencio,
Es más fácil y más amable
No me hables de desamor
que infesta mi alma, me la infesta.
Y entiérrame junto a ti
que no tengo esperanza alguna
en soledad
Y el mundo secundará
en la tierra debajo de aquí
Pero llegue y era nada
Y el tiempo nos dará nada
Así que por qué decidiste confiar
En un hombre que sabías decadente
Jaël Reynolds
Almost 10 years and still wishing it was on Spotify or iTunes
Kamil tak naprawdę Kamil
Still waiting.
maitrikka
i swear i've been waiting for a decade, yeah.
brenda P.B
Still waiting...
Liam Harreman
I’ve found it on SoundCloud
leleprtk
Waiting!
Alex Ramirez
Funny how this song is unreleased yet I think it's one of their best.
Kolamecp
Same with 'Home'…
Patryk Marcinów
I gave you all is one of the best
Dane Brough
This song is released, it was made for the credits of the movie, "Wuthering Heights" and it's not necessarily a track