"Grace" is a song by Mumford & Sons frontman

Marcus Mumford Marcus Oliver Johnstone Mumford (born 31 January 1987) is a British singer, songwriter, musician, and record producer. He is best known as the lead singer of the band folk band Mumford & Sons. He also plays a number of instruments with the group ...

, released as the second single from his solo debut album '' Self-Titled'' on 29 July 2022. The song features vocalist Danielle Ponder and bassist

Pino Paladino Giuseppe Henry "Pino" Palladino (born 17 October 1957) is a Welsh musician, songwriter, and record producer. A prolific session bassist, he has played bass for acts such as The Who, the John Mayer Trio, Nine Inch Nails, Gary Numan, Jeff Beck ...

, and was co-written by Mumford and producer

Blake Mills Blake Mills (born September 21, 1986) is an American songwriter, guitarist, producer, and composer based in California. Biography Blake Mills was born in Santa Monica, California, United States, and grew up in Malibu, where he attended Malibu ...

Style and reception

Mxdwn.com's Alexandra Kozicki called the song "quite soulful, with Mumford's gravelly voice accompanied by aniellePonder's backing vocals" with production which is "softer than what Mumford and Sons are known for, employing light percussion and acoustic instruments", though the songwriting is "at its finest ... in the form of him clearly expressing some catharsis and the deep tension in his voice during the chorus. There is a lot of pain in this song, but also some hope and, as the title suggests, grace." ''

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''s Tom Skinner called the song "rough-and-ready" and "

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-tinged". ''The Arts Desk''s Barney Harsent notes the track standing in contrast to lead single " Cannibal", with that song's "sparse, open spaces of its predecessor" being succeeded by one that "bursts into life like

Tom Petty Thomas Earl Petty (October 20, 1950October 2, 2017) was an American musician who was the lead vocalist and guitarist of the rock band Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, formed in 1976. He previously led the band Mudcrutch, was a member of the lat ...

gatecrashing a therapy session" and is "unexpectedly and defiantly upbeat, the sound of a weight being lifted." ''

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''s Helen Brown says the song's "cradle-rocked riff evokes a hushed take on Tom Petty's " Free Fallin'", while ''NME''s Elizabeth Aubrey says the song is "full of zippy guitars and uplifting instrumentation." ''Riff''s Roman Gokhman notes that the "main guitar riff has more electric grit than Mumford & Sons, while a guitar solo distances it from the Americana sound for which Mumford is best known. It sounds more like Collective Soul." In a less positive review of the album, ''DIY''s Emma Swann calls the track "a confused mess of US radio rock tropes: a

blues Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the Afr ...

guitar solo bulldozing its way through while Marcus adopts a

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for the hollow refrain of 'Grace/Like a river'". Per Mumford, the song is about a conversation he had with his mother about his having been sexually abused as a child.

Music video

The single was released alongside a music video directed by Diane Martel, and features Mumford drinking several glasses of water to the point where he coughs it up and it spills all over himself. Per Kozicki, "Though the sound of the song is mellow in tempo, there is a much more soulful and active undertone to the video, which mirrors the feeling of the track."

Live performances

Mumford performed the song with a live band on ''

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'' on October 4, 2022.

Personnel

– vocals, guitar, percussion, songwriting *

– producer, songwriting, guitar, harmonium, piano, percussion,

synth bass A synthesizer (also spelled synthesiser) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis and f ...

, vocals, mixing engineer * Joseph Lorge – mixing engineer,

baritone guitar The baritone guitar is a guitar with a longer scale length, typically a larger body, and heavier internal bracing, so it can be tuned to a lower pitch. Gretsch, Fender, Gibson, Ibanez, ESP Guitars, PRS Guitars, Music Man, Danelectro, Schec ...

* Pino Palladino – bass *

Steve Ferrone Steve Ferrone (born 25 April 1950) is an English drummer. He is known as a member of the rock band Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers from 1994 to 2017, replacing original drummer Stan Lynch, and as part of the "classic lineup" of the Average Whi ...

– drums * Reuben James – organ * Rob Moose – strings * Danielle Ponder – vocals * Gavin Batty – vocals * Patricia Sullivan – mastering engineer * Danielle Goldsmith, Gabe Lowry, Logan Taylor, and Scott Moore – assistant recording engineers

References

{{Authority control 2022 singles 2022 songs Marcus Mumford songs Songs written by Blake Mills Songs written by Marcus Mumford