Song Exploder - Mumford & Sons - Beloved

Episode Date: March 6, 2019

Mumford & Sons are a Grammy-winning band that formed in London in 2007. They’ve put out four albums, and sold millions of copies. Their last three albums have all debuted at number one on the Billboard charts. The most recent of those albums is Delta, which came out in November 2018. The band is made up of Marcus Mumford, Ben Lovett, Winston Marshall, and Ted Dwane, and in this episode, Marcus and Ben break down a song from Delta called “Beloved.” You’ll how the song went from Marcus’s original raw voice memo to the intricate finished track. songexploder.net/mumford-and-sons

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made. My name is Tau Wyn. Mumford and Sons are a Grammy-winning band that formed in London in 2007. They've put out four albums and sold millions of copies. Their last three albums have all debuted at number one on the Billboard charts. The most recent of those albums is Delta, which came out in November 2018. The band is made up of Marcus Mumford, Ben Lovett, Winston-Marst. and Ted Dwayne.

And in this episode, Marcus and Ben break down a song from Delta called Beloved. You'll hear how the song went from Marcus' original raw voice memo to the intricate finished track. I'm Ben Lovett, and I principally play the keys in Montferland Sons. My name is Marcus. I also play a Monfin & Sons. I sing, and primarily I'm a drummer, but I also try and fake it on the guitar. The way that we have done things historically with the band is songs could come from any four of us. and Beloved was one of Marcus's.

I started it in October, 2017, down at my studio in Devon, which is in the countryside in England. And I just bought a Hammond C3 organ. And I love new instruments, because most of the time, if you bought a new instrument, you tend to write a song on it straight away.

And that happened with this organ. I turned the organ up as loud as I could go, and I just started playing on it. Generally, I try and capture what I'm messing around with on a voice memo. I was on my own and I opened the doors. It was quite a sunny day and you just see fields, you just see grass. It's quite an emotive sound for me.

It's a sound I grew up hearing and a couple weeks before I was hanging out with my grandma who was dying and so I was kind of thinking about that a lot and started writing that initial chorus I did. Pleat it lyrically till she died but that's where the song came from. The next day I did the first demo of it. That form was just organ, banjo and acoustic guitar. I was just capturing an idea and playing these chords. And then I took it into the lads.

Marcus sent it over on email, and I remember thinking that it felt important, and it was moving, you know, that's just those really simple things. It's funny, we've sent each other so many demos over the years, and sometimes we send each other stuff that just doesn't sound important and it can sound good without sounding important. Those are different things. But this song had a weight to it. When it came in, it was kind of two-step rhythm, which has become the starting place for a lot of the songs I write. And there was a song in it that we all recognised that was worth pursuing, but sonically it wasn't very interesting. And a lot of this,

we kind of have to tip our hats to what a process it was working with Paul Epworth, because in hindsight, The direction that it went in, Paul heard immediately. Paul Epworth is a producer who's won an Oscar and multiple Grammys for his work with Adele. He's also worked with Paul McCartney, U-2, and Lord. And in 2012, he won the Grammy for producer of the year. We had a session with Paul in December. It was out of the gate, and he couldn't even quite articulate it. He was there just running around the studio.

And basically, what he managed to communicate was on the basis of talking about this, Reich-esque rolling piano type thing, like Six Pianos by Steve Reich. Six Pianos is a piece from 1973 by composer Steve Reich, who's one of the pioneers of American Minimal Music. It's a real touchpoint, bizarre touchpoint from Muffin and Duns, but it was there. And that's what he heard when he heard the demo. It's that kind of mantra stuff that never lands. It's always moving on to the next bit.

That kind of triggered some thoughts. And we just started messing around with some stuff. It was about layering this kind of intertwining rhythm. It's three pianos on top of each other. And they all stay doing what they do throughout the whole song. So the dynamics created by these single parts that are built and then taken away again. It's an entirely unplayable piano part by anyone. So Ben put down that piano part, which completely changed the rhythm of the song.

and then Winston put down the banjo, which was so unlike what I was expecting this like rhythmical, matic banjo. So the repetitive rhythm of the guitar was replaced by this intertwining rhythm between the piano and the banjo. And those two things completely change the texture of the song.

Paul's studio, this wooden floored rooms, the noisiest recording studio you've ever seen. All the floorboards squeak. And then you're using the most precise microsearched. in the world to pick up every foot squeak and Ted, Ted's very fidgety and he was fidgeting just before we started the take tapping on his electric bass strings while they were muted and stomping his foot at the same time. We then chopped that up and looped and that became part of the rhythm track. Paul had just come fresh off the back of doing a lot of hip-hop and taking some

inspiration from hip-hop producers and it's basically like sampling. It's like using a sample of something live played in the room by a musician and then cut it up, put through different reverbs, mute it and then bring it back in. We did it a lot because it makes you go, oh that texture has been in since the top, I just didn't really notice it. And then you notice it and then it's taken away and replaced for something else. Like a live drum kit, it's really distorted. We used quite a violent compressor.

And alongside that live drum kit, we use the mini-mook synth. If you get it into a certain mode, you can use it as basically a drum kit, but it sounds pretty weird in 80s. I think there's a youthful lack of thought to this record. It was youthful and it's kind of innocence, and we're just playing music in a room. And then falling in love with particular moments. And a lot of that came from improvisation.

Just trying something out and really like asking questions, Sometimes not even a completed thought. Oh, it's the DX. Oh, sick. That DX is a beast of an instrument. It probably weighs like 150 pounds. It's like 35 years old, this one that's in Hall Studio. And it's unique because, apart from having these analog synth sounds to it, it's also entirely touch-sensitive.

It's like you can lean into the note and you get more out of it. That was really fun because it just means there's a new thing to explore there. to explore there. And I've heard Paul say it like 20 times. He'd never heard it, like the way Ben played it. He said in Ben's hands, it sounds like a different instrument to the one that he was familiar with. I think you just kind of had a love affair with that instrument.

We certainly used different techniques on this record than we had before, and it was really fun to do so. You're hearing a lexicon harmonizer called a Voice Live. And it's a new toy that we started playing around with. Sword made famous by Kanye and Bonne Ver. We tried that in the first session we did with Paul. And actually, we ended up using it for demoing quite a lot

and then sound replacing what the harmony engine had come up with with real voices. Before you leave, you must know you are beloved. We were getting a bit used to just singing one, three and five harmonies on everything and stacking them. But using a harmony engine to fabricate harmonies would make us find like the seventh that we'd never really normally sing or weirder harmonies. That's Yeba, who we were all big fans of. She came to the studio and she sang on that. And she's a powerhouse man. She's got pipes for days.

She's stacked up like eight parts for the ending. We're used to doing a lot of takes, but the first demo vocal we did in London ended up being the verse vocal. I lose objectivity very quickly on vocal takes. I don't really know when it's getting too sentimental or a bit melodramatic or not putting enough of a shift in or if I'm getting lazy and feel like, oh, that'll do.

But Paul changed my attitude towards singing by encouraging me. It's really simple. He'd just be like, try singing it really quietly. And shift a whisper away with silver hair from your eyes. I never tried that before. I'd never tried it. I always projected because I played live so much

before ever getting in the studio, I was always used to having to project and singing to the back of the room. And it was completely revolutionary. It wasn't sounding very good, and he just went, try singing it as quietly as you possibly can. It completely changed the way that I now approach singing. Paul was funny on it as well

because he was just unbelievably relaxed. He was like, yeah, the demo vocal's pretty good, man. I was like, when are we going to do the real ones? She says the Lord has a plan. It's pretty hard to understand. And then the chorus I did in you. Before you leave, you must know you are beloved. There were two ways to go with that first chorus.

One was to sing it out and proud, and one was to bring it really intimate and quiet and down. We went back and forth so many times. And it's the vocal performance itself, specifically that ended up being the reason why we ended up going as it is. It just lands. And Paul's advice was, you know, we don't have to do it another 50 times. If it lands, it lands. We recorded a lot around this Neumann microphone, which is effectively a head, like a crash test dummy head. It's a binaural microphone. And it just sounds like what you

would hear if your head was in that position. And Paul encouraged us on this song to stand as the four of us around this head microphone, and just play it. I played acoustic guitar. And Ben played keys. Winston put down the banjo, and Ted played bass. So that became the basis for this recording,

which was far more interesting than the demo that I'd brought, which now sounds very dull in comparison. I mean, no song is a Muffman and Sun song without going through everyone's hands. That process is invaluable to us. The idea of someone departing, that's where the genesis of the song came from. And I think wherever a song starts,

it should stay with you in that way during the making of it. That's kind of a beautiful and a painful thing at the same time. And normally, it's unspoken. It's very un-English to talk about, you're not to, so we tend not to. Obviously, we were all very aware of what was going on personally for Marx at the time, you know. But I actually felt like it was a love song.

And in some ways, it is a love song still. Which I loved. That's what I wanted the song to be. And now here's Beloved by Mumford and Sons in its entirety. Enthrown at grandeur, but tired. Shift from your eyes. I'd never seen you on Kent before. Visit SongExploder.net for more information about Mumford and Sons,

their producer Paul Epworth and Yeba, the guest vocalist on Beloved. You'll also find a link to buy or stream this song. Song Exploder was created by executive producer Rishi Kesh Hirway. This episode was produced and edited by Christian Coons. Carlos Lerma made the artwork, which you can see on the Song Exploder website. Special thanks to the folks at the Headgum Podcast Network, who let Rishi record his interview with Mumford and Sons at the HeadGum Studio in downtown L.A.

You can check out all of their podcasts, including Punch Up the Jam and Gilmore Guys at headgum.com. Song Exploder is also part of a podcast network. Radiotopia from PRX, a collective of fiercely independent podcasts. You can learn about all of our shows at Radiootopia.fm. You can also find Song Exploder on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, at Song Exploder.

and you can find me at Talget Stay Down. My name is Tao Wyn. Thanks for listening.