Last November, Mumford & Sons released Delta, their first collection of all new material since 2015. In support of the release, the British folk-rock outfit debuted the official music video for Delta single “Beloved.”
The clip was directed by BAFTA-nominated filmmaker Charlotte Regan and shot across Port Talbot, Wales. Mirroring the song’s lyrical themes of death, acceptance and memory, the striking and, at points, surrealist five-minute video follows a young boy as he visits his mother in the hospital, offering a glimpse of the boy’s daydreams of escaping the medical unit with his mother to explore the city.
As the director explained in a statement:
Port Talbot was an amazing place. To be honest it was somewhere I hadn’t thought about until the band mentioned it. I used to visit my nan up north in Redcar where she lived for a little while and remembered looking down long streets and seeing kids playing football or curby with these big industrial buildings in the background, and initially, that was where I had in mind. But as soon as we started looking at pictures of Port Talbot, we knew it was perfect. It was a proper beautiful place with an amazing sense of community but still maintained that kind of grit we were looking for.
The band’s lead vocalist and frontman shared his thoughts behind the single:
Everyone knows loss in one way or another. This song is about that. I’d never sat with anyone as they died before, and it had an effect on me. As it does everyone I know who has experienced it. But there’s wildness and beauty in it as well, and a deep honouring, that became the beginnings of this song that we worked up called “Beloved.” I feel determined for people to take whatever they want from it, and not to be emotionally prescriptive.
Watch Mumford & Sons’ official video for “Beloved” below:
