Sophomore Slump features a comparison of a musician’s first and second albums, as well as a discussion of where those albums fit in their larger discography.

Mumford & Sons

While members of Mumford & Sons first began playing together n London in 2006, the band really took shape in 2007. They released their debut album, Sigh No More, two years later, in October 2009 in the UK, although those of us in the US didn’t get it until a few months later, in February 2010.

Sigh No More

Sigh No More starts with, dare I say, one of the greatest opening songs ever. The title track builds slowly, with just a guitar and vocals, and after just under two minutes and a repetition of the line, “Love is a giddy thing,” it shifts. “Love, it will not betray you, dismay or enslave you / It will set you free / Be more like the man you were made to be,” frontman Marcus Mumford sings. “Sigh No More” becomes a raucous celebration of love, and this is Mumford & Sons. This is what you’re in for for the rest of the album, and it’s incredible, with elements of bluegrass, folk, and rock.

It continues with “The Cave,” with more acoustic guitar, plenty of banjo, and a touch of piano, plus an incredibly catchy chorus—and much of Sigh No More continues like this. Some songs are better than others, of course, but there are no missteps here. “Roll Away Your Stone” is among the upbeat highlights, while “White Blank Page” and “I Gave You All” are full of angst and intensity. And then, of course, there’s “Little Lion Man,” its most famous track, which combines all of that with fast guitar and banjos and plenty of heartache. The album gets its darker as it nears its end with “Timshel,” “Thistle & Weeds,” and “Awake My Soul,” the latter of which takes some cues from earlier in the album and builds to an explosive chorus, similar in structure to “Sigh No More” but almost its foil in its tone and lyrics. Finally, Sigh No More ends with the pairing of “Dust Bowl Dance,” featuring some of Mumford’s best, most intense and emotional vocals, and “After the Storm,” a fitting and somber final track.

And while the instrumentation on the album is fantastic, Sigh No More is also full of great lyrics: “Darkness is a harsh time, don’t you think?” in “Roll Away Your Stone,” “Tell me now where was my fault / In loving you with my whole heart” in “White Blank Page,” “If only I had an enemy bigger than my apathy, I could’ve won” in “I Gave You All.”

And, of course, again, “Little Lion Man.” There’s nothing like singing, “I really fucked it up this time, didn’t I, my dear?” pretty much anywhere—at the top of your lungs in the car, perhaps, or best of all, in a stadium with thousands of other fans.

Babel

Mumford & Sons followed Sigh No More three years later with Babel, in which they worked with producer Markus Dravs, who was also with them for Sigh No More. Babel was a huge success—it was the fastest-selling rock album of the decade in both the UK and US.

Like Sigh No More, the first track of Babel is its title track, which explodes with the rich instrumentation the band had first shown on Sigh No More. Babel plays to the band’s strengths, with many of the elements which made that first album such a great one. It pushes forward with “Whispers in the Dark” and standout singles “I Will Wait,” “Lover of the Light,” which gets better with each second that passes as it builds on itself, and “Hopeless Wanderer”—and its amazing video—alongside lovely ballads like “Ghosts That We Knew” and “Where Are You Now” and the sweet vocal harmonies of “Lovers’ Eyes,” among the album’s best tracks thanks to its composition. Other standouts include the intense “Broken Crown,” similar to Sigh No More’s “Thistle & Weeds,” and the deluxe edition includes a delightfully Mumford take on Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Boxer,” an apt choice of cover. Many of these songs were already familiar to fans, as the band had debuted them live before, something the press treated as a sort of anomaly but is a fairly common practice in rock music.

All in all, Babel is a masterful work of folk rock, a testament to the bands’ skill as songwriters, with more than one bait-and-switch track which starts slow and turns bombastic and lyrics which both celebrate love and lament a love lost.

Sophomore Slump or Comeback of the Year?

Like plenty of people, my first exposure to Mumford & Sons was “Little Lion Man.” The band had been getting a lot of buzz in my circles, and when I finally did hear it, I was sold. And then I listened to Sigh No More.

It’s a wonderful work of folk rock, one of the best albums to come out of the early 2000s and certainly 2009/2010 itself. It’s hard not to fall in love with it, and Mumford & Sons had the unenviable task of following it up with Babel. The danger of the sophomore slump was imminent. But instead…we got Babel. The album is a proper continuation of the sound the band had put forth on Sigh No More. And while track-for-track, Sigh No More might emerge as the stronger album thanks to some stronger songwriting, Babel is by no means inferior. It’s full of everything I and other fans fell in love with on Sigh No More. And despite the popularity of the genre at the time, neither album feels like a relic of the era. Folk rock may have exploded then, but few did it—and are still doing it—as beautifully as Mumford & Sons.

The band followed Babel with Wilder Mind, which brought with it a shift in sound. And that’s understandable, respectable, even—the band delivered a certain sound for two albums, one fans fell in love with, and it would’ve been easy to do again. Instead, they set their banjos aside, but they’re just not the same without them. Wilder Mind doesn’t pack the same punch as Sigh No More and Babel. Despite its shift away from folk to a more typical modern rock sound, its simply not as bold and powerful, as memorable, as its predecessors, although “The Wolf” is a solid alt-rock song. Mumford & Sons’ last studio album was Delta, with a sound similar to that of Wilder Mind. 2024 did see the release of new single “Good People,” their first new release in five years and a promising glimpse of what might come next, and they hinted at more to come with the date of Jan. 17.

They also put on a hell of a show. Once, tailgating with friends before one such show, someone devised a Mumford & Sons concert drinking game—if Marcus Mumford comes onstage wearing a vest, finish your drink.

Is there a specific musician whose first two albums you’d like me to dive into? Give me a suggestion! Is there another musical-related topic you’re just dying to hear my thoughts on? Let me know! Is there a burning music-related question you’re dying to ask me? Ask away!