Rather Be
by Clean Bandit (featuring Jess Glynne)

Album: New Eyes (2014)
Charted: 1 10
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Songfacts®:

  • Clean Bandit is a Cambridge-based Baroque-Pop quartet comprising bassist and producer Jack "Wandeck" Patterson, cellist Grace Chatto, violinist Neil Amin-Smith, and drummer Luke Patterson. They met while studying as undergraduates at Cambridge University's Jesus College. The band's name, Clean Bandit, comes from an English translation of a nickname given by Grace's sister (Chatto and Jack Patterson lived in Russia for a period); the meaning is similar to the English phrase "utter" or "complete bastard."
  • This song was written by the band with Jimmy Napes (sometimes known as James Napier). The London-based songwriter and producer also contributed to the creation of several of the tracks on Disclosure's Settle album, including the hit singles " Latch," "White Noise" and "You & Me."
  • The song features vocals from newcomer Jess Glynne, who also sung on Route 94's UK #1 single "My Love."
  • The video centres around a Japanese female fan played by actress Haruka Abe, who is best known for playing Miko in the BBC Three late 2000s series Ideal. Jack Patterson explained: "[The song] is quite romantic, but the video is about a Japanese fan of the band that becomes delirious and has hallucinations of band members and our logo appearing unexpectedly in her daily life as a chef."
  • The song sold 163,000 copies in its first week in the UK, the biggest weekly sale for a song released in January since Babylon Zoo's 1996 hit "Spaceman."
  • This achieved 1.09 million plays on spotify during the first week of February. In doing so it broke the record for the most streamed song over seven days on the service.
  • Asked by Digital Spy what she thought it is about the song that people connected with, Grace Chatto replied: "I think it's really feel-good. I remember last year at the festivals before we'd recorded it and stuff, we were playing it live and everyone would be smiling and dancing to that song even though they hadn't heard it before."

    "The lyrics are kind of romantic in a positive way, which is nice," she added.
  • Grace Chatto explained the song's meaning to Radio.com. "It's a love song about being completely content with the person that you're with," she said. "We usually write songs by writing all the instrumental parts first and only when that's finished start on the vocal."

    "When Jack wrote the original line, we didn't know it was going to be a love song at that point," Chatto added, "and then it developed into this really happy, sentimental thing."
  • Clean Bandit were listening to '90s music at the time they wrote the song. They wanted to pen a tune in a similar tempo and style to Rosie Gaines' 1997 UK club favorite "Closer Than Close."
  • This won the Grammy Award for Best Dance Recording at the 2015 ceremony.
  • The song is best known in the UK for soundtracking Marks & Spencer food adverts (without Jess Glynne's vocals). "My old headmaster tells pupils that 'Jack Patterson, who did the Marks and Spencer music' went to the school," Patterson joked to The Daily Telegraph.
  • The song plays during the closing credits during the final episode, "Amor Vincit Omnia" of Netflix's Sense8.

Comments: 2

  • Badger from Birmingham I wrote my own version to Rather Be ,it's called "lettuce and celery " I would love Jimmy Napes from Clean Bandit to hear it.
  • Camille from Toronto, OhThere's a huskiness in the female's voice that gives perfect emotion to the lyrics. This song is subtle and easy to listen to while your thoughts are elsewhere; it's great background music. A universal theme anyone can relate to, it's about putting your feelings of love on the line and hoping that your special someone wants to take a leap of faith with you that it will work out, because no matter where or in what circumstances, there's no place you'd rather be than with that person.
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