
Song · Lumineers
“Ophelia” by Lumineers
From the album Cleopatra (2016)
“Ophelia” by Lumineers appears on 39 radio countdowns from 25 stations between 2016 and 2026. It was first released in 2016 on the album Cleopatra. Its best result is #1 on the WRNR Top 103.1 Songs of 2016, and it was voted number one on three countdowns in total. In the combined RockLists rankings it is the #1 alternative song of 2016, #3,584 alternative song of all time and #81 of the '10s.
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"Ophelia" was the lead single from Cleopatra, the Lumineers' second album in 2016, and it took the long road to get there. Jeremiah Fraites sent Wesley Schultz a slower instrumental demo back in 2011, Schultz came up with the hook while playing a back bar in Los Angeles, and then the song stalled: he couldn't find verses worthy of it, and it was shelved until the band dusted it off in January 2015.
They nearly renamed it because The Band had already claimed the title, but Schultz decided nothing else sounded as right. What came out is a stomping, piano-driven sway, Fraites on piano and drums, Neyla Pekarek adding cello and voice, with Simone Felice producing and Ryan Hewitt recording and mixing.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
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