Holocene

Track three on Bon Iver, Bon Iver, made at April Base with Matt McCaughan on drums and hand claps, Sean Carey on vibraphone, Mike Lewis on soprano saxophone, Colin Stetson on alto saxophone and clarinets, and CJ Camerieri on French horns. It was the second single, in September 2011, backed with a cover of Peter Gabriel's Come Talk to Me.

Vernon told Mojo the title came partly from the geological era and partly from a bar in Portland, Oregon, where he had "a dark night of the soul", and that it stands for the times you are not doing well. Its three verses cover three periods of his life in Eau Claire, and he has called it a song about redemption, about feeling special and ordinary at the same time. Talking to Aaron Rodgers for GQ in 2019, he said the idea came on a Christmas night walk through icy Wisconsin, after watching Inglourious Basterds with his brother.

Life

It was nominated for Record and Song of the Year at the 2012 Grammys, losing both to Adele's Rolling in the Deep. Pitchfork named it the second best song of 2011, and in 2019 NPR listeners voted it the best song of the decade. First played on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon on 21 June 2011, it is the band's fourth most played song, with 298 performances, and they played it on Saturday Night Live in February 2012. Beverly Glenn-Copeland said it was the song that won him over to the album. The upload in the hypersongs web is the official video, directed by Nabil Elderkin and shot in Iceland around Vík, in which a young boy wanders volcanic land and glaciers. It premiered on National Geographic and runs a few seconds longer than the album track.