Mumford & Sons - Little Lion Man

The time is 1:30am, I am leaving a friend’s house in Hawthorne NJ for a 20 minute trip home. I know the way, so getting lost is not an issue. Flipping through my CD’s, the realization hits that I have grown tired of my own music. Rarely do I listen to the radio, for fear of incessant commercials and excessive talking about irrelevant topics, but at this hour there is probably something good on.


I scan to 101.9, RXP an alternative Rock station, a new find for me, making my recent pilgrimage from Florida. The car speakers play the beginnings of a folk rock song, a banjo is plucked beneath a distinctly British sound. The display reads: Mumford & Sons: Little Lion Man. The most shocking part of this scenario is the discovery of a song, by means of the radio. I love the song, and shockingly enough I have acquired the album. The radio has never thrown me a song that I had not previously heard, liked, and purchased. But that is the whole point of radio isn’t it?

Mumford and Sons came across the pond from London. Comprised of Marcus Mumford, Winston Marshall, Ben Lovett and Ted Dwayne, the band plays a variety of unique instruments from banjo, dobro, and mandolin. Rising from Britain’s Folk rock scene, the band built up momentum in Australia and in their home country. The album “Sigh No More” came out in October of 2009 in the UK and in February of 2010 in the U.S. I particularly love the lyrical depth, combined with my newly formed affinity for this type of music.

“Weep for yourself, my man,
you'll never be what is in your heart.
weep little lion man,
you're not as brave as you were at the start
rate yourself and rake yourself,
take all the courage you have left
wasted on fixing all the problems
that you made in your own head”



For the most part, adults my age find their music through friends, or the internet. A quick scan of news feeds on Facebook, Metacritic, or iTunes can land anyone neck deep in a pile of new albums spanning across all genres. The radio has lost its relevance and has become a promotional tool for advertisers and pop-musicians. Repetitive playlists and frequent commercials have driven younger generations away from classic FM radio to better mediums such as Pandora, Slacker Radio, Sirius, or just discovering music on their own. The solution here is become relevant again, get good, new bands on air, encourage the discovery process and finally, talk about topics that matter to people. Top 40 combined with Perez Hilton headlines just isn’t working anymore and if you want listeners to trudge on through the commercials, radio will need to switch its strategy, or sink.