Clean Bandit’s Rise: From Mozart’s House to Global Hits
Clean Bandit formed in Cambridge in 2008, bringing together an unusual combination of musicians and musical influences.
The original lineup included brothers Jack and Luke Patterson, Grace Chatto, Ssegawa-Ssekintu Kiwanuka and Neil Amin-Smith.
Their sound was difficult to put into a single category.
There was electronic dance music. There was pop. There were classical strings. And, increasingly, there were guest singers.
That combination would eventually become their trademark.
Mozart’s House
One of Clean Bandit’s earliest songs was Mozart’s House, released as their second single in 2010. The tune was written and sung by Ssegawa-Ssekintu Kiwanuka, who would leave the group before their debut album was released.
That may have unintentionally helped shape Clean Bandit’s future.
Rather than relying on one permanent lead singer, the band began working with different vocalists for different songs. And when the right singer met the right Clean Bandit production, something quite extraordinary happened.
Rather Be
In 2014, Clean Bandit released Rather Be, featuring a then relatively unknown Jess Glynne.
It was a perfect combination. Clean Bandit’s electronic production and classical influences provided the musical identity, while Glynne’s voice gave the song its instantly recognisable personality.
The result was enormous. Rather Be reached number one in the U.K. and became a major international hit. It was one of the biggest-selling singles of 2014 in the U.K., second only to Pharrell Williams’ Happy.
Interestingly, the song didn’t reach number one in the United States, despite becoming a huge global success elsewhere.
For working musicians, though, chart position isn’t really the point. Rather Be quickly became one of those modern songs that bands could put into a setlist and expect people to recognise immediately.
It sits comfortably alongside later dance-pop favourites such as One Kiss, Don’t Start Now, Say My Name, Make Luv and American Boy, as well as older dance classics like Finally and Show Me Love.
The Rather Be guitar challenge
There’s something else I discovered while working on Rather Be. I once spent half a day figuring out how to play the song on guitar. It was surprisingly tricky.
On paper, it can look like a fairly straightforward pop song. But when you actually try to reproduce the parts, you discover that Clean Bandit have packed a lot into the arrangement.
The rhythm, the chord changes and the way the different parts interact all have to sit in exactly the right place.
Eventually I got there. And it gave me a new appreciation for just how well Clean Bandit can construct a pop song.
That’s one of the reasons I like using modern productions as guitar lessons. They may sound simple. They’re often not.
Rockabye
Clean Bandit’s next major breakthrough came with Rockabye, featuring Anne-Marie and Sean Paul.
By this point, the band’s formula was becoming clear: Take an instantly memorable pop hook. Add an electronic dance production. Bring in a distinctive vocalist.
Then add the classical and instrumental elements that make the track recognisably Clean Bandit.
Rockabye became a huge international hit and reached number one in the U.K.
It also became a Christmas number one in the U.K., making it the first song to achieve that distinction since Mad World without being associated with The X Factor, a charity release or a novelty chart campaign.
The song’s success also demonstrated just how effective Clean Bandit’s collaboration model had become. The vocalist could change. The musical identity remained.
Neil Amin-Smith leaves
There’s an interesting twist in the Clean Bandit story around the same time. Violinist and pianist Neil Amin-Smith left the band just two days before the release of Rockabye.
That seems almost impossible to imagine when you consider how closely strings had become associated with Clean Bandit’s identity. But the band continued. And perhaps that’s another reason their sound has been so successful.
The strings aren’t simply decoration. They’re part of a broader production style that can adapt to different musicians and different vocalists.
Symphony
Clean Bandit’s third enormous hit was Symphony, featuring Swedish singer Zara Larsson.
Released in 2017, it continued the formula that had worked so well with Rather Be and Rockabye.
Once again, the combination of electronic production, classical instrumentation and a strong pop vocal created a song that felt both modern and familiar.
The title is particularly appropriate. A symphony traditionally brings many different musical parts together to create one larger piece of music. That’s essentially what Clean Bandit do.
Electronic beats. Strings. Piano. Synths. Bass. Pop vocals. Different influences, all working together.
More than three hits
It’s easy to think of Clean Bandit as the band behind three huge songs:
- Rather Be
- Rockabye
- Symphony
But there’s more to their catalogue. They also had success with Tick Tock, featuring Mabel and 24kGoldn, and have produced remixes of songs including Whitney Houston’s How Will I Know and Mika’s Grace Kelly.
The band’s willingness to move between genres and collaborate with different artists has always been central to their identity.
They’re not really a band in the traditional sense. They’re more like a musical production team with a recognisable sound.
Why Clean Bandit are interesting for guitarists
Clean Bandit might seem like an unusual choice for a guitar lesson website. After all, their music is heavily electronic and built around programmed production, strings and studio effects. But that’s exactly what makes them interesting.
When you try to reduce a highly produced pop track to a guitar arrangement, you have to work out what’s actually important.
Which chords define the song? Which rhythm carries the groove? Which melody needs to remain? What can you leave out? And what absolutely has to stay?
That’s what happened when I worked out Rather Be. The original production contains far more than one guitarist could possibly reproduce. But once you strip it down, you discover that the underlying songwriting is strong enough to survive.
That’s a very useful lesson.
Building a repertoire from modern pop
One of the reasons I like learning songs such as Rather Be is that they’re still useful to working musicians.
You don’t necessarily learn a song because it’s technically difficult. You learn it because people know it.
A good repertoire needs a mixture of styles and eras. You might play Show Me Love followed by American Boy, then move into One Kiss or Don’t Start Now. And Rather Be fits naturally into that world.
It’s a modern classic that audiences recognise, while also being interesting enough for a guitarist to dig into.
From Cambridge to the world
Clean Bandit’s story is ultimately about bringing unlikely ingredients together.
Classical music and electronic dance music. Live musicians and programmed production. A band and a succession of guest singers.
The result is a sound that has travelled far beyond the small Cambridge beginnings of 2008. And perhaps that’s the biggest lesson for a musician. You don’t necessarily need to invent something completely new. Sometimes you just need to put familiar things together in a way people haven’t heard before.
Clean Bandit did that with strings, dance music and pop. And when they found the right songs and the right singers, the results became enormous.
For guitarists, Rather Be is a particularly good place to start. It may take you half a day to figure out. But once you do, you’ll have learned more than a set of chords.
You’ll have learned how to listen to a modern production, identify the important musical parts and turn a complicated pop arrangement into something you can actually play.
And that’s what building a repertoire is all about: taking great songs from every era and every style and finding a way to make them work on your instrument.
Clean Bandit Tunes | Related Pages
Rather Be | Chords + TAB
You can learn how to play Rather Be by Clean Bandit using chords, lyrics, TAB, chord analysis, and backing tracks.
| G#m D#m | Eadd9 B/D# F#/A# |
We’re a thousand miles from comfort…
Clean Bandit on the web
