Songfacts®:

• "Good People" is a collaboration between Mumford & Sons and Pharrell Williams. The uplifting track blends Mumford & Sons' signature folk-rock sound with Pharrell's danceable grooves and full-flavored production style. It marks their first collaboration, though the British band performed Pharrell's song "Happy" at a benefit concert in 2017.
  
  "I always thought that their sound was an interesting one and the aesthetic was just as interesting," Pharrell told GQ about working with Mumford & Sons. "And I was very curious as to what it would be like to work with them, there was like a snowball effect of curiosity, and if I could even be of added value."
• The lyrics express optimism and hope for the future. Though the "good people" are facing many hardships, they believe there is a new dawn on its way.
• The song came together following conversations about their upbringings in the church, their shared roots of gospel music and hymnals. "We talked about how change doesn't come without a revelation first," Mumford told GQ. "And we both had experience with that. We'd all had experience with that, and it felt like we were ready to write a song that felt quite connected to how we were feeling and reaching into some soulful level."
• Pharrell also provides backing vocals on the track alongside the Native Vocalists, a six-piece vocal choir from various Native American tribes within the Northern Great Plains.
• Marcus Mumford and Pharrell Williams first met in the mid-2010s on the festival circuit. "There was a mutual kind of respect and admiration straight away," Mumford told Apple Music's Zane Lowe. "And we've always talked about making music together. We've always talked about just getting in the studio and seeing what happened."
  
  Mumford & Sons performed a set on April 28, 2023 at Pharrell's Something in the Water festival in Virginia Beach. It was there, bathed in the afterglow of their performance, that the band committed to getting in the studio with the visionary producer.
  
  "I said to him, man, we've got to do that thing we've always talked about doing and get in the studio together," Mumford said. "And he was like, 'I'm waiting on you'. And we were like, 'You've seemed a little bit busy mate'. And he made the time, we got together in New York, we started messing around with some ideas."
• Mumford & Sons and Pharrell Williams recorded "Good People" in studios in New York and Paris. The song materialized with lightning speed during the first day of their Paris sessions. It only took about eight hours to complete the track, a departure from the band's usual process. "It's so different to the songwriter world where you rehearse for six months before you even go into record a song," said Mumford.
• Released on January 16, 2024, "Good People" is Mumford & Sons' first new song since 2019's "Blind Leading The Blind." It is also their first release since the departure of banjo player Winston Marshall, who left the band in 2021.
• Mumford & Sons and Pharrell Williams first performed the song during Pharrell's Louis Vuitton Men's Autumn/Winter 2024 runway show at Paris Fashion Week on January 16, 2024.
• The song climbed to #1 on Billboard's Adult Alternative Airplay chart dated April 20, 2024. It was Pharrell Williams' first Adult Alternative Airplay leader and Mumford & Sons' fifth, following "I Will Wait" in 2012, "Lover of the Light" in 2013, "Believe" in 2015 and "Guiding Light" in 2018-19.