Beloved was released last month as the third single from Mumford and Sons’ latest album Delta, and the song has also been blessed with a music video now. The poignant clip shows the grief of a son whose mother is on her deathbed, and how he gets over it by imagining an escape from the hospital. It has been directed by Charlotte Regan, who’s known for her BAFTA nominated short film, Standby.
The song itself has a sad premise. Its chorus, “Before you leave, you must know you are beloved. And before you leave, remember I was with you,” beautifully encapsulates the feeling of one having accepted the inevitable and trying to find something cheery in the last moments. The soft synthy music goes perfectly with this song, and the voice of Marcus Mumford is the cherry on the top.
The lead singer in fact, had this to say about Beloved – “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.”
Like we said, the music video of Beloved tackles a sad premise. The young boy, having realized that his mother’s time has come, imagines a day of wandering lawlessly with her, finding fun in the littlest of things. Like ringing random people’s doorbells, taking a dip in the ocean, stealing someone’s clothes, or just perching on a wall while downing some snacks and staring into oblivion.
This video was shot in Port Talbot, Wales. About the place, director Charlotte Regan said, “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.”
You can watch the music video of Beloved in the space above.
