The thing is, Mumford & Sons has already tried to push the boundaries of their image in music video format before but they still got pigeonholed as the rustic hipster band. Miley Cyrus is a pretty classic example of this - she's spent the better part of the last four years carefully honing her image through music videos, and her last collaboration with Diane Martel for " We Can't Stop" is one that really stuck and will probably act as a visual and thematic reference for this point in Miley Cyrus' career in the future. Music videos have a way of being solidified in culture in a way that TV/award show appearances and similar outlets don't, so artists use videos as a way to push new boundaries in a way that will stick.
One of the new roles of music videos is to act as sort of canonical releases for artists who want to change their image. Then, of course, there is the moment where Forte and Sudeikis are so in the moment of the song that they decide to just make out right then and there. The video itself is mostly a parody of 2009's " Little Lion Man", which is the original source of things like the four members in a line, the strings of lights, and the overzealous instrument hip gyrations.īizarro World Mumford & Sons takes it a step further and really go after the entire "merry band of dudes" concept, adding in a scene where the fake band is so overcome with emotion for their own song that they literally have tears streaming down their faces. However, I think the real confusion comes from people who just don't understand why Mumfords & Sons would do this.Īnd it's not as if Mumford & Sons hasn't had a lot of success building on the image that is under scrutiny in "Hopeless Wanderer". There's no indication anywhere in the video who these people are, either - you just have to know. I think the added confusion comes from the fact that director Sam Jones brilliantly builds up to the fact that the four people in the video are not, in fact, the actual Mumford & Sons by obscuring their faces for the first 45 seconds or so. We've read a lot of articles that really hate this video and lament that it even exists. Sam Jones captures all the little touches like Jason Bateman's lip quiver when he has a moment with Ed Helms early on in the video.Ī quick glance over the YouTube comments and other blog posts shows that people are alternately very confused and very amused with this video. None of them ever betray an intense focus on being earnest band members who completely believe in their song and see humping their upright bass as just a result of music overpowering them. I'm not that big of an Ed Helms fan but I laugh every time I see him struggling to weild an accordian in the boat (note that there is no accordian in "Hopeless Wanderer"). It helps that this is also a really hilarious video. There's nothing in here that really firmly establishes this as a friendly tribute rather than an ill-willed mocking. For all we know, all four members of Bizarro World Mumford & Sons could hate Mumford & Sons. Sudeikis, Helms, Bateman, and Forte (let's call them Bizarro World Mumford & Sons) do such a spot-on takedown of all the earnestness and hipster cliches that people love and hate Mumford & Sons for, that it's almost hard to beleive that this is a Mumford & Sons video and not a Funny or Die or SNL video mocking them. I've never really seen a band use a music video to so effectively self-parody themselves before. Music video cameos are definitely nothing new, of course, but this one seemed different.
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