Daisy Jones And The Six songwriter Marcus Mumford: The cast sounds so good it "kinda pisses me off"

Marcus Mumford, who helped write Daisy Jones And The Six's biggest hit, praises Sam Claflin and Riley Keough for their singing

By Mary Kate Carr | March 3, 2023 | 9:20pm

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Daisy Jones And The Six songwriter Marcus Mumford: The cast sounds so good it

Marcus Mumford; Sam Claflin and Riley Keough Photo: Vivien Killilea/Getty Images for Prime Video

If there’s one takeaway from the Daisy Jones And The Six press tour, it’s that 1) the leads didn’t know how to sing or play instruments when they were cast, and 2) they learned how and actually became so adept that they sounded like actual rock stars. You can judge for yourself by listening to the fictional band’s real album, or tuning into the series on Prime Video. Or you can take Marcus Mumford’s word on it.

Aurora producer Blake Mills’ many songwriting collaborators on the album included Mumford, who wanted to help his friend’s “epic quest” to create a period-appropriate but wholly original body of work for the series. The Grammy winner is a co-writer on “Look At Us Now (Honeycomb),” one of the album’s best tracks and the band’s first big breakout hit.

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“Writing this slightly embattled dialogue between these two characters was just a really fun exercise,” Mumford tells Variety. “And then it was just about making the song as cool as we could, and the melody feel like it’s one that could survive for a long time and could launch a band… I remember it feeling extremely collaborative, open-hearted and with the free spirit that I think ends up being conveyed in the song.”

“It’s funny, the first time I listened to [the song] I was like, ‘Oh that’s weird, they used Blake’s voice.’ But it’s not. It’s just that Sam [Claflin] studied Blake’s vibrato so perfectly that it sounds like Blake’s vibrato,” he goes on to say. “I was amazed by that. And I think Riley [Keough] just gets all the kind of vituperative spirit of that lyric so well. It’s pretty radical what they were able to do, I’ve got enormous admiration for them.” He adds with a laugh: “It kinda pisses me off a little bit actually.”

“The band is genuinely good!” Brigade includes co-star Tom Wright, who told The New York Times he has “a high bar” for live performance having hung out with “some great jazz musicians” like Ornette Coleman, Chet Baker, and Jim Hall. “I was shocked,” he said of seeing the group play live. “They sounded like a real band. It was incredible.”

Which brings us to another frequent refrain from the press tour, which is that the cast would “love” to tour with their very real band. “We want a comeback show!” Keough says to Variety. “And we can. That’s the beautiful thing,” Claflin adds. They can, sure, but somehow amidst all the interviews and talk shows and TikToks we still haven’t gotten one live performance to promote the show. C’mon, Daisy Jones, it’s time to hit the stage—prove all that praise isn’t just talk!