Believe

The first single from Wilder Mind finds Mumford & Sons burning their banjos and casting their kick-drum aside in favor of a more stadium-ready rock sound. "Towards the end of the Babel tour, we'd always play new songs during soundchecks, and none of them featured the banjo, or a kick-drum," said Marcus Mumford. "We didn't say: 'No acoustic instruments.' But I think all of us had this desire to shake it up," he added. "The songwriting hasn't changed drastically; it was led more by a desire to not do the same thing again. Plus, we fell back in love with drums! It's as simple as that."

The song finds Marcus Mumford singing about matters of the heart. "I don't even know if I believe, everything you're trying to say to me," he croons during the song's relatively light build-up. There is a change of direction at the two minute mark, when guitarist (formerly: banjoist) Winston Marshall lets rip a screeching electric guitar wail as the track intensifies. "Say something, say something. Something like you love me," pleads Mumford against increased volume from the axeman, before it finally reaches a crescendo.

Speaking with Rolling Stone, Marcus Mumford explained why the lyrics for Wilder Mind appear to more heartfelt here compared with the band's previous material. "We're drawing off of four people's experiences over probably a year-long period, you know? So there was plenty of content and stuff to write songs about," he explained. "Everyone was writing what we thought were great lyrics." "We've always said that it's a competition between songs rather than writers, so it's like, whoever writes it, if it's a good song, it's in," Mumford added. "And so the boys kept coming up with a bunch of amazing lyrics that I found really fun to sing, and that was quite a liberating experience too ' really enjoying, relishing singing someone else's lyrics."