Lead singer of Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros, Alex Ebert, has come to the defence of the group’s 2009 observe ‘Dwelling’.
Its saccharine lyrics and hummable tune made it a staple of what the web has since dubbed “stomp clap” music, by which they imply the indie-folk tracks that briefly soundtracked an period outlined by mason jars and man buns.
The ubiquity of the plucky observe has seemingly grow to be extra grating over time, with an outdated clip of the band performing the track – notably captioned “the worst track on the planet” – reaching nearly 90million views on X/Twitter earlier this week.
Now, Ebert has weighed in, not solely defending the observe however declaring his band the originators of the style. In a brand new video on Instagram, he defined that you simply knew “the bones” of a track have been good if they may outlive their context, which he stated was the case for ‘Dwelling’.
Worst track ever made https://t.co/CJRrvp3C4r pic.twitter.com/BS4wHAqrLK
— Justin🦩Boldaji (@justinboldaji) August 4, 2025
“For those who pull it out of an acoustic guitar, you place a piano there, and it really works: it’s a superb track. You pull it out of the piano, you place it on the harp – it’s nonetheless working. You are taking it out of the harp, you sing it a capella – it’s nonetheless working. It’s a superb track!”
He continued: “Now, Dwelling’ has been lined a number of occasions, various things. A few of them are hits, like precise hit songs. Some man takes it from baritone, places it in falsetto… you recognize, the one which went viral – Edith Whiskers, shoutout to no matter that’s. That went viral.”
Ebert then went on to name out fellow stomp clapper’s Of Monsters and Males and The Lumineers, claiming each bands had copied Magnetic Zeros’ hits.
“By the way in which, ” he stated, “we have been the primary to do the stomp and clap fuckin’ people pop factor to the purpose the place The Lumineers, they sought out considered one of our co-producers […] and have been like, ‘Hey, try this Edward Sharpe factor for us’.”
“For actual, that’s an actual story. Of Monsters & Males, they obtained our album earlier than they ever made an album as a result of our agent was their supervisor, and he or she confirmed it to them they usually mainly obtained so near ‘Dwelling’ that we nearly sued them.
“They have been doing Apple commercials and I used to be getting calls saying, ‘Congratulations’. That’s how carefully individuals began doing this.”
Rounding off his ideas, he clarified that the track was not a “good recording”, however relatively “a superb track”.
“But it surely not being a superb recording is what I really like about [it],” Ebert stated. “It’s like a second. We recorded it on tape, we didn’t even know the right way to document on tape, it sounds prefer it’s made in some muffled storage.
“I needed to unfold the porous happenstance incidentalism of Edward Sharpe. As an alternative, what I unfold was stomp claps taken and recorded higher, and that’s miserable. However apart from that, ‘Dwelling’ is seemingly a superb track.”
