The triumphant march of the English quartet continued last week as Mumford & Sons bagged the “Album of the Year” at the Grammys in L.A. for their second album, “Babel”. The lead singer of the band Marcus Mumford said, ”We figured we weren’t going to win anything because the Black Keys have been sweeping up all day, and deservedly so,” as he accepted the award from Adele.
After the success of their first album, “Sigh No More”, the modest band admitted, they thought their second album would be a failure compared to this. Marcus Mumford even told Rolling Stone he thought “Babel” would be “Sigh No More”s disappointing second child. Babel sold 600,000 copies in the US the week it was released, last autumn, and has gone on to rack up more than 1.7m sales, making it the fourth best selling of 2012 in the US. Other winners of the award in previous years have been Adele (2012), Arcade Fire (2011) and Taylor Swift (2010).
Mumford went on to say he would not have minded that outcome: “We were making it really believing it and thinking about that as much as possible – and so it’s really sweet now to see it do its thing as well. That’s crazy for us. When we released ‘Sigh No More’, our manager said, ‘We’re probably gonna sell between 100,000 and 150,000 records.’ And we were like, ‘That’s amazing!’” says Mumford. “Since then, everything has gotten more ridiculous, fantastical and mind-fucking.”
With the success of Mumford & Sons, they have inspired hugely popular roots-influenced acts, such as The Lumineers to follow in their footsteps. As Billboard put it: “Mainstream rock music, specifically that being consumed in the United States, has rearranged its profile to allow for banjo breaks.”
