“Back in 2013, off the back of touring Sigh No More and Babel we decided we needed to take a bit of a break from the road, catch our breath and regroup. The first time we really hung out to make music together was after a couple months living our lives and it was in the back garden of a friend’s house deep in Brooklyn, NY. That friend was Aaron Dessner from the National and he had built a studio in the garage in his garden. Between catching up, eating burritos and having a couple drinks, we messed around a bit with some new song ideas. This was one of those moments. Many of the songs that began in that garden ended up on Wilder Mind, whereas the later version of this song we saved for Delta.”
– Mumford & Sons newsletter, 8 May 2020

“We went into the studio and did a vague version of ‘Monster’, says Mumford. Then around midnight, after we’d all been drinking, we decided to record a song, ‘Forever’, which was the four of us in a room live — drums, bass, the 335 and a synth thing. At the time it was really exciting, a very garage rock kind of song. Then we took three months off, which was great. When they reconvened at Dwane’s studio in February last year, the genesis of the band’s new approach was in place. Stylistically, says Mumford, there wasn’t an acoustic instrument in sight'. We took what ‘Forever’ had done and worked with that. It wasn’t like we said, OK, let’s write more songs just like ‘Forever’, it was more that the song set the bar for the others to come. It was all very rock ’n’ roll.”
– The Australian, 25 April 2015

“There was a song called ‘Forever’ which we all got excited about, because it sounded like a garage band and we wigged out on it. But it ended up not making it on to the album, because it felt like old Mumford & Sons stuff, just played on different instruments. It didn’t feel like enough of a development in terms of writing, but it was like the gateway drug to the rest of the album – it got us into the heavy stuff.”
– Irish Times, 20 Apr 2015