Wake Up

Recorded in 2003 and 2004 at Hotel2Tango and produced by the band, it was the fifth and last single from Funeral, released as a one-sided 7-inch on Rough Trade on 14 November 2005. A radio edit runs 3:45. It reached 29 in the UK and 25 on the Canadian rock chart, and is certified platinum in Canada. Joe Levy of the Village Voice heard it as an anthem about children and adulthood.

Pitchfork praised the chorus as one of the most thrilling moments in recent rock. NME ranked it 25th among the best songs of the decade in 2009 and 25th among the greatest of all time in 2014, and Rolling Stone placed it 42nd among the songs of the 2000s in 2011.

Live and elsewhere

The band performed it with David Bowie at Fashion Rocks in 2005. U2 played it before their Vertigo Tour shows. A re-recording appeared in the trailer for Where the Wild Things Are in 2009, and the song is on the soundtrack to The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. In 2010 it was licensed for Super Bowl commercials, with the proceeds going to Partners in Health after the Haiti earthquake. Teams use it as a pre-game intro, among them the New York Rangers, Burnley, Aston Villa and Linfield.

At Fashion Rocks in New York in 2005 David Bowie joined the band for it, and recordings with Bowie, including "Life on Mars" and "Five Years", were put out as a virtual live EP on iTunes. U2 played it before shows on their 2005-06 Vertigo Tour, and Arcade Fire opened three of those shows. At the third, in Montreal, they joined U2's encore, a cover of Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart". Rough Trade released it only on 7-inch, and it spent three weeks at number one on the MTV2 (UK) NME Chart Show.