When it comes to Mumford & Sons’ new Prizefighter album, “I think this is the best music we’ve ever made,” Marcus Mumford declares to the Billboard Pop Shop Podcast. “I love it more than anything we’ve ever done.”
Prizefighter is the band’s sixth full-length studio effort and comes less than a year after its last set, March 2025’s Rushmere. That’s a fast turnaround for a group that historically has gone between two-and-a-half to six years between albums — but it was a chance meeting with writer/musician/producer Aaron Dessner that sparked the shortest wait between albums.
“We were in Electric Lady [Studios] in New York [mixing Rushmere] … and [Dessner] popped in, and we were like, ‘Do you want to hear our new record?’” the band’s Ben Lovett tells the Pop Shop Podcast (listen to the full interview below).
Dessner, who already knew the band and had worked with them in the past, began sharing with them what he was working on at the time. It was very “show and tell,” as Lovett puts it. At one point, Dessner played the band a demo of a track he had written with Jon Bellion. Turns out, Gracie Abrams (who has worked with Dessner extensively) had also heard that same demo and texted Mumford, telling him, “You guys should f— with it.”
“I started working on some lyrics right there and then — we’re still mixing Rushmere!,” recalls Mumford. “We were on a side quest. I texted them to her, actually, and said, ‘What do you think of this?’ She was like the fairy godmother of this record. She touched it with her magic wand and was like, ‘Yep, you guys gotta do more.’”
Ultimately, that track would turn into “The Banjo Song” and would be included on the new album, which was recorded in studios across France, the United Kingdom and the United States, most extensively at Dessner’s famed Long Pond Studio in New York.
The album is chock-full of collaborators, including Abrams (singing on the track “Badlands”), Bellion, Brandi Carlile (who texted Mumford lyrical ideas from a dream she had), FINNEAS, Hozier, Gigi Perez and Justin Vernon.
“We’ve invested a huge amount of time in a creative community of friends. … These are the people who inspire us,” Mumford says of their large circle of collaborators. “They’re the people that we are honored and privileged to share this ground with who are also at the top of their game.”
Notably, Chris Stapleton was the “one collaborator on the record we didn’t already have a relationship with,” says Mumford, who refers to the country superstar as his “hero from afar.” Mumford called him up “out of the blue” (as they have a mutual friend in the producer Dave Cobb, who produced Rushmere with the band), had “the most amazing conversation about family and touring and shows,” and then, in Mumford’s words, “popped the question” about collaborating on the album’s “Here” (which was also the first song the band wrote for the album).
“He came back with his vocal take that just blew us all away,” Mumford says. “He’s a generational talent, and it was a total joy.”
Fans will get lots of chances to hear the new music live, as the band will be touring extensively through October, with its North American Prizefighter Tour kicking off June 2 in Vancouver. The trek will continue through October, currently concluding with an Oct. 6 date at the Kia Forum in Inglewood, California. And before all that, the band will return to NBC’s Saturday Night Live on Feb. 28 as the musical guest for the first time since 2018 (and fourth time in total).
Check out some select moments from the Pop Shop’s interview with Mumford & Sons (Ben Lovett, Ted Dwane and Marcus Mumford) below, and listen to the full interview above.
On how quickly the new album came after Rushmere, and if there was a creative spark or urgency that motivated the new project:
Ben: Coming out of Rushmere, it felt like we had many more songs. Actually, still feels like there’s songs yet to be sort of harnessed and put in the studio. So we were in Electric Lady in New York, mixing Rushmere, and Aaron Dessner was working next door, and he popped in, and we were like, “Do you want to hear our new record?” And then in kind of a very show-and-tell way, he was like, “Oh that’s great, great, let me play some stuff that I’ve got going on,” just a couple of ideas. And it just snowballs. It was like this kind of moment where there were no rules. For the last couple of years, it feels like we’ve been operating in a space of not being particularly concerned or constrained by any of the patterns that maybe we had, you know, pre-2018.
A chance encounter with Aaron Dessner led to Gracie Abrams becoming “the fairy godmother of this record”:
Marcus: By the time we bumped into Aaron in Electric Lady in New York, we were sort of in shape as a band again. The muscles were all working, you know, together, and we’d sort of renewed our vows in January of 2021 and we in the studio for 18 months already, and we were just ready.
We were in the right place at the right time, and so when [Aaron] showed us an idea that he’d written with Jon Bellion [a demo of “The Banjo Song”] and actually Gracie Abrams knew about the backing track, she’d heard it and texted me, and was like, “You guys should f— with it.”
And I started working on some lyrics right there, and then we’re still mixing Rushmere. We were on a side quest, and I texted them to her, actually, and said, “What do you think of this?” She was like, the fairy godmother of this record. She touched it with her magic wand. And was like, “Yep, you guys got to do more.”
How the new album is “the most similar” to their first album, thanks to the lack of expectations and the freedom that came with the album’s production:
Marcus: Straight after Rushmere, everyone kind of thought and assumed we were … getting everything ready to go promote Rushmere, we were actually finishing Prizefighter by then. And there was a freedom to that, which I think you hear on the record. … It’s like, it’s almost just extra and because no one was expecting that, and we could just take ourselves off to Long Pond, and no one was looking and we weren’t thinking about the audience at all. That’s why it feels to me the most similar to our first record before there was an audience, really. And there’s a freedom in that as a writer, I think, which you can access. And we really tapped into it and leant into it, and it led to this, this collection of songs.
Why the album is titled Prizefighter, after the same-named song on the album:
Marcus: It embodies a spirit to us that we felt made it the right contender for a title. Titles are very strange, and band names are even stranger, but they’re the things that go out ahead of your music weirdly, and it can be awkward, but so it’s just about picking a word that feels like it embodies the spirit of the collection of songs that you’ve put together and the artistic impression you’ve left on the record, literally. So Prizefighter felt like the right one for loads of reasons. But yeah, a lot of them are in that song. The character in that song is striving and trying. Like, we’re nothing else if not, like, try-hards. We f—ing try, you know? And we work hard, and we know that we have to try and earn this stuff. And we’ll say yes to most shows we get offered because we love touring. We always have, and we’ll just keep trying really hard, because I wish it came as naturally as it appears to come to lots of other artists, but it doesn’t. You’ve got to try and work. You’ve got to put in the work for this stuff and and that’s why it felt like we were in shape by the time we saw Aaron.
The band has a collab with Chris Stapleton on the record, and they performed with Lainey Wilson in concert last October (covering Shania Twain’s “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!”), and their “I Will Wait” even hit Billboard’s Country Airplay chart. What is it about the band’s sound that seems to flow so naturally in the world of country music?
Ted: It’s a funny thing. I think we’re all really inspired by that kind of tradition of songwriting. And I think for a while we sort of danced around it a little bit and never wanted to quite look it directly in the eye. But we went to Telluride — it was a long time ago now, I guess like 2011 or 2012 or something, got off the bus and were greeted at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival by so many of these, like, amazing heroes of ours who [were] really digging what we were doing. And I think ever since then, it’s sort of emboldened us to sort of lean into that side of our interests more and more. And as we have done, it’s been more and more rewarding, you know? It’s just an amazing community of people, like playing the Lainey songs. We did a train tour [Railroad Revival Tour] last year and we were her band. We had the great privilege of being her band for about 40 minutes. And it was like just astonishing, you know, really learning her music and seeing the way that she writes and and feeling, once again, that kind of hospitality that that kind of corner of corner of the industry seems to have. Yeah, it’s awesome.
On working with Stapleton on the album’s “Here”:
Marcus: I mean, if we’ve ever written a country song, it’s “Here.” It is a country song. You know, the formula, you know, the shape that it takes, is pretty straight-up a country song. So, you know, we spent a lot of time in Nashville. We’ve made records in Nashville. We wrote Babel in Nashville. Most of our band that we tour with, the musicians we get to play with every night, a lot of them are based in Nashville, and we just, we love it. … Maybe we’ll never be fully accepted by the country music scene in Nashville, and that’s OK. But “Here” was like, yeah, the most straightforward country song I think we’ll ever write. So calling Chris out of the blue, really, he was the one collaborator on the record we didn’t already have a relationship with. He was just like my hero from afar. So … being able to call him was a total honor. And we had the most amazing conversation about family and touring and shows. And there’s a lot of mutual respect there. You know, we just made a record with Dave Cobb, his longtime collaborator, and had lots in common. And then I popped the question … and he came back with this vocal take that just blew us all away. You know, he’s a generational talent, and it was a total joy.
The band reacts to how Billboard suggests to them that the sound of the album, and its live playing and musicianship, could not be re-created by A.I., and that it really came through that there were people and ideas and souls behind the album.
Marcus: Well, I’ll just tell you that A.I.’s got so good that it makes it seem like it’s not A.I., but actually … no joking … yeah, it was very played.
Ben: We believe in playing instruments. It’s one of the things that we really banded around when we started this thing in the first place, was how fun it is to just get in a room and play songs together. You know, some ways it’s this kind of amorphous collaborative enterprise, Mumford & Sons, and it’s ever-evolving, but at the heart of it is performance. So we do try and keep — and you can hear it like you say throughout the album that it’s like — these performances, and there’s take selection in the studio. You know, when you’re like, “That’s the take,” because it has something to it that is. It could be the same notes, but it’s like the intention in the little breath and intensity is a keeper. So I love that about the studio process, and I think a lot of the time it can be enticing to get sucked into kind of rounding out the edges and overcompressing stuff too much. I think because Aaron Dessner is such a purist as a musician himself, I think he was good as a partner on the production, to make sure that no one was going to get away with, you know, too many touch-ups. And I think that’s what you feel. You feel the blemishes, you feel the moments where you’re leaning in. And I think that’s great, and I’m glad that you said that.
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In addition to the Pop Shop’s interview with Mumford & Sons, hosts Katie and Keith chat about their field trip to Lady Gaga’s Mayhem Ball concert at the Kia Forum, chart news about Taylor Swift’s “Opalite” hitting No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, and Bad Bunny returning to the top of the Billboard 200 albums chart.
The Billboard Pop Shop Podcast is your one-stop shop for all things pop on Billboard‘s weekly charts. You can always count on a lively discussion about the latest pop news, fun chart stats and stories, new music, and guest interviews with music stars and folks from the world of pop. Casual pop fans and chart junkies can hear Billboard‘s executive digital director, West Coast, Katie Atkinson and Billboard’s managing director, charts and data operations, Keith Caulfield every week on the podcast, which can be streamed on Billboard.com or downloaded in Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast provider. (Click here to listen to the previous edition of the show on Billboard.com.)