We

We (stylised in uppercase) is the sixth studio album by Canadian indie rock band Arcade Fire, released through Columbia Records on May 6, 2022. Produced by Nigel Godrich and band members Win Butler and Régine Chassagne, it was recorded in studios in New Orleans; in El Paso, Texas; and on Mount Desert Island in Maine. The album takes its name from the Russian dystopian novel We by Yevgeny Zamyatin. It was the final album by Arcade Fire to feature multi-instrumentalist Will Butler, who departed the band in 2022. Preceded by the singles "The Lightning I, II" and "Unconditional I (Lookout Kid)", We received generally positive reviews from music critics and achieved moderate commercial success. It debuted at number six on the US Billboard 200 chart, earning 32,000 album-equivalent units (26,500 of which were sales of the full album) in its first week of release, and went to number one in the United Kingdom, Ireland, the Netherlands, and Portugal. The album was nominated for Best Alternative Music Album at the 65th Annual Grammy Awards. Background In April 2020, Win Butler posted a letter to his Instagram account indicating that work on a new Arcade Fire album had commenced prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, and that the writing continued during the lockdown measures. He noted that he had written a song entitled "Age of Anxiety" before the pandemic, and that many of the themes he had begun to explore felt appropriate, given the circumstances surrounding the pandemic. Later that month, Butler shared some snippets of the new material. On October 21, 2020, Butler commented about Arcade Fire's sixth album during an interview for the Broken Record podcast. The band had been writing for a year before the COVID-19 lockdown, and, during the lockdown, Butler kept working and wrote "two or three" new albums. Arcade Fire planned to record the album in Texas "during the election".