Mumford & Sons’ “Babel” forecasted to have year’s biggest debut

Grace Stanisci

English quartet Mumford & Sons are heading for this year's biggest record debut on Billboard's 200 album chart and in the process are surpassing industry heavyweights like Justin Bieber, Madonna and Pink.

According to Billboard, the folk rock band's second studio effort "Babel" is projected to sell more than Bieber's album "Believe," which sold 374,000 copies in its debut, with approximately 600,000 copies by Sunday Sept. 30.

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In addition to beating Bieber, "Babel" will also debut with a higher amount of sales than artists like Madonna, whose album "MDNA" topped the chart with 359,000 copies sold in its first week, and the current No. 1 resident Pink, who debuted with opening week sales totalling 280,000 copies.

Giving the record 3.5/5 stars, Rolling Stone says "Babel" contains "dramatic builds, dropouts and soft-loud shifts as [impressive] as U2 or Skrillex," and takes the band to a new level.

"'Babel' steps up Mumford & Sons' game without changing it too much," the magazine writes comparing this album to their first record "Sigh No More" which was released in 2009."It feels shinier, punchier, more arena-scale than the debut, with the band hollering, hooting, plucking and strumming like Olympian street buskers."

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Formed in 2007, the band consists of Marcus Mumford, Ben Lovett ,"Country" Winston Marshall, and Ted Dwane and are best known for tracks like "Little Lion Man" and "I Will Wait," which is currently at number 23 on Billboard's Hot 100 chart.

Commenting on album reviews that state that "Babel" is "full of all manner of religious shoptalk, with Biblical metaphors swirling like detritus in a Christopher Nolan film," Mumford denied the religious connotations saying the record is "more social than religious, verging on the philosophical."

"I don't even call myself a Christian," he said. "Spirituality is the word we engage with more. We're fans of faith, no religion. We're just writing songs that ask questions. Sometimes the best way to go about exploring a question, things we wouldn't necessarily talk about in conversation, is by writing a song."

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Check out the band performing "I Will Wait" featured below.


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