Artists & Bands

Clean Bandit tunes

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Three of the biggest tunes in the decade of 2010-20!

Electronic Dance composers Clean Bandit formed in Cambridge in 2008. Consisting of two brothers, Jack and Luke Peterson, Grace Chatto, Ssegawa-Ssekintu Kiwanuka, and Neil Amin-Smith.

The group has become known for its dance-pop that often fuses elements of classical music, their use of strings, and mainly, collaborations with singers.

The idea of using all these different singers probably came from their original lead singer, Ssegawa-Ssekintu Kiwanuka who left before the first album was released. He wrote and sang Mozart’s House, Clean Bandit’s second single in 2010.

With only two albums released in 2014 and 2018, they have had huge success with the three tunes Rather Be, Rockabye, and Symphony.

Their first big single, Rather Be featured at the time unknown singer Jess Glynn, was an enormous success, perhaps still their biggest tune.

Rather Be used elements of classical fused with dance music. In 2014, it was the second best-selling tune of the year, only beaten by Happy, Pharrell Williams.

Neil Amin Smith, who plays violin and piano, left the band two days before the release of their next smash hit, Rockabye, featuring Anne-Marie and Sean Paul.

Both Rather Be and Rockabye had videos made by the band who actually made music videos for other artists as a side project to make ends meet before their debut album was even released.

Rockabye is their most successful tune if you look at sales as of 2022 (8+ million), Spotify plays (1.3 billion) and YouTube views (2.7 billion), these numbers are genuinely crazy! It was also the first U.K. Xmas #1 since Mad World that wasn’t either X Factor, charity-related, or a stunt (Rage Against The Machine).

Their third biggest tune was Symphony, featuring Swedish singer Zara Larsson. This too came from the second album and has almost the same insane numbers as Rockabye although it didn’t chart as high.

Apart from these three massive hits, Clean Bandit has also had success with Tick Tock featuring Mabel and 24kGoldn. They’re also known for their remixes of How Will I Know by Whitney Houston and Mika’s Grace Kelly.

I once spent half a day working out how to play Rather Be on the guitar. It was pretty tricky, but I got there in the end. It gave me a new level of application for how well Clean Bandit can craft a tune!