To celebrate the release of their new album, Prizefighter, Mumford and Sons join a new episode of the Rolling Stone Uncut podcast!
Frontman Marcus Mumford and guitarist Ted Dwane joined the podcast to talk about the band’s sixth album, which comes less than a year after Rushmere. On this episode, Mumford and Dwane talk about the quick turnaround, teaming up again with The National’s Aaron Dessner, collaborations with the likes of Gracie Abrams and Gigi Perez and their upcoming Australian tour.
Watch or listen to the full episode below (subscribe, rate and follow)!
Performing at the Sydney Opera House in 2025
“We’d been invited to play the steps before, but getting inside was what we really wanted to do. I remember it being my favourite out of that run of shows, which was like, let’s reacquaint ourselves with a small part of our audience in the places that we like to go. It felt like a privilege. It was a bit reverent to start with, I was a bit like, ‘Shit, this is serious!’ But then we got it going and it was just so fun, and having people behind us, like playing 360 like that, we love to do. It was just really special.”
Quick turnaround between Rushmere and Prizefighter and working with Aaron Dessner
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“You can’t really plan this stuff in terms of a directive or anything like that. We’ve always kind of followed the muse a bit. With making Rushmere, I think we had an opportunity to come back together and write some music and be very intentional about our desire to do so.We’ve never really had the opportunity before to stop and look each other in the eye and actually opt in, you know? But, as we were finishing the record, there was just still a huge amount of momentum creatively going on, and we were mixing it, we were getting it over the finish line in Electric Lady Studios in New York and Aaron Dessner wandered down to sort of check in with us.
“We’ve known him for a long time, and he heard where we were at creatively and then he played us some stuff that he had been working on… we have a huge amount of respect for him, and it just didn’t take very much at all for us to suddenly be making a record together. So it wasn’t really premeditated, but it was sort of undeniable when it started happening… we were sort of impatient to pursue this next body of work.”
Collabs on the album like Chris Stapleton, Hozier and Gracie Abrams
“Gracie was there the day that Aaron first came in when we were mixing Rushmere. [Dessner] came in and played us this thing he’d worked on with Jon Bellion. Gracie had heard it too, and she was like, ‘You guys have gotta write something on that.’ And I remember that day texting her the lyrics that I came up with for the first concept draft of ‘The Banjo Song,’ and she was like, ‘Dudes, you gotta do more.’
“So then I showed her ‘Prizefighter,’ and we showed her demos all the way along… then of course you know when we said if you wanna sing on any of this shit, you have an open invitation, and she picked ‘Badlands.’ What we didn’t know was that she’d turned that song into a duet. I was expecting maybe she might do some sort of Joni Mitchell-esque like ghostly BVs in the background of a chorus or something, and she sang it from the top… her pop sensibilities are so dialled.”
What sets Prizefighter apart from the rest of the Mumford & Sons catalogue?
“I feel like it’s the first record I’ve made accepting the reality of who I am, which sounds super narcissistic, but a record making process is a narcissistic one in its bones, you know? You’ve gotta care so much about your story that you think other people should hear it, which is kind of fucked up, but I sort of feel like it’s a better realised version of who we are.
“It’s all of the playfulness that our band began with, but represented in a more honest way, I think, than we’ve ever done before.
“I just sort of feel like unashamed to be an artist properly for the first time.”
