Looking back at a 2015 conversation with the band as they embraced electricity, faced backlash, and plotted the most old-timey tour imaginable.
In the grand scheme of rock reinventions, Mumford & Sons ditching the banjos in 2015 wasn’t exactly Dylan at Newport, but for a band that built its empire on foot-stomping folk anthems, it was still a shock. Gone were the waistcoats and barn-burning crescendos; in their place, electric guitars, a darker tone, and Wilder Mind, the record that turned them into something bigger—and more divisive—than ever before.
Back then, I caught up with Marcus Mumford and Winston Marshall as they adjusted to life on the other side of their sound shift. It had been a few years since Babel had made them one of the biggest bands in the world, and they were on the verge of another massive tour. Naturally, we ended up talking about steamboats, smugness, and how open marriages might just be the secret to band longevity.
The Steamboat Dream That Never Died
The last time I had seen them before this interview, they were standing on The Belle of Louisville, a 100-year-old steamboat, looking exactly like a band that had been placed there for the aesthetic.
“When Mumford & Sons come to town, apparently you have to put them somewhere old-timey,” I joked.
They laughed, but they were dead serious about wanting to take the whole thing further.
“It’s a pipe dream,” Marshall admitted. “But we want to do a tour down the Mississippi on a steamboat, set up a stage, and just play along the river.”
Mumford was all in. “It’s going to take a hell of a lot of work.”
It didn’t happen, obviously. Logistical nightmares tend to sink grand ideas like that. But a decade later, the thought of Mumford & Sons floating past New Orleans on a paddlewheel still feels like the kind of fever dream the Wilder Mind era could have pulled off.
The Album That Made Some People Mad
The band knew Wilder Mind was going to get a reaction. The Mumford formula—so effective it was practically cloned across folk-pop radio for years—was suddenly out the window. And when the first singles hit, the takes came fast.
“Every album has a story, and for this one, it’s the sound,” Mumford told me. “People kept asking, ‘What’s it going to be?’ But for us, the songs always come first. The sound is just a vehicle to support them.”
Marshall, never one to soften a stance, put it more bluntly. “We just did what we wanted.”
They weren’t blind to the backlash. By that point, Mumford & Sons had become one of those bands that people love to have opinions about. But did they care?
“We don’t really mind,” Mumford shrugged. “We love the record, we loved making it, and we love playing it. That’s all that matters.”
Marshall smirked. “Though now you’re going to accuse me of being smug.”
I hadn’t planned on it, but now that he brought it up…
“Listen, I didn’t even like the first two records that much,” he added.
Writing Songs Without the Heartbreak
Mumford & Sons had always been associated with big, sweeping emotions. Their lyrics read like they’d been pulled from someone’s old journal—plenty of heartache, plenty of grand statements. But by 2015, they were wildly successful, well-traveled, and (seemingly) pretty content.
So what happens to the songwriting when the struggle isn’t there anymore?
“I don’t think needing to find heartache is a good enough excuse to write a song,” Mumford said. “Good writers can write from whatever position they’re in. And they can empathize.”
For the first time, they had written actual love songs.
“It’s like, how do you make happiness sound interesting?” Mumford mused. “It’s a challenge.”
They weren’t pretending life was perfect, though.
“It’s a big assumption that we’re happy,” Mumford joked. “We are, but no one’s got it good all the time.”
He even recalled something his grandmother told him: “She said, ‘Never seek darkness, because it’ll come for you eventually.’ And she was right. Life’s a dark place. You don’t have to go looking for trouble—it’ll find you.”
Kansas City and the Open Marriage of Mumford & Sons
Timing is everything, and Wilder Mind had an awkward moment when The New Basement Tapes project—featuring Mumford on the Dylan-penned “Kansas City”—landed around the same time. It sounded like old-school Mumford, right as they were trying to introduce themselves as a different band.
Did that bug them?
Marshall shook his head. “Not at all. We love all our children.”
That was the thing—Mumford & Sons were always a little restless. Even at their peak, they were stretching, collaborating, working outside the band. Marshall compared it to an “open marriage,” which, naturally, I had to prod him about.
“That’s the healthiest kind of marriage, right?”
Marshall sighed. “Oh, here we go…”
A decade later, Wilder Mind remains the most debated album in Mumford & Sons’ catalog. It shook off their early aesthetic, sent them to the top of festival lineups, and proved they weren’t just a one-trick band.
As for that steamboat dream?
We’re still waiting, guys.
Watch the interview above and then check out the video below.
