Watch: Phillip Phillips debuts ‘Home’ video in time for Olympic glory

In this past season, America adopted Phillip Phillips as its newly crowned “American Idol” winner. Now, the songwriter and performer’s song “Home” was adopted by NBC for its Team U.S.A. women’s gymnastics Olympics coverage.

So it’s only right that Phillips finally release an official music video for “Home,” which you can check out below.

Be honest: who didn’t think this was a Mumford & Sons track when you first heard it? And how many more people went out and bought Mumfords’ “Sigh No More” once they knew that was the inspiration?

And the visuals behind the track are precisely the kind of thing the British band would have early in its career — and, in fact, in a way have. “Big Easy Express” — which chronicled that band’s journey across America with Old Crow Medicine Show and Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros — had all the sun-dapple-dee-doo, writerly focus and natural, moving-image magic that “Home” has, only with a bigger budget and a timeline that covered more than just Salt Lake City to Denver.

This is not to say this video and track isn’t any good. It scratches a particular itch for a return to acoustic-based instrumentation and “organic” approach to recording and mixing. That’s how the Mumfords, the Avett Brothers, Edward Sharpe, Of Monsters And Men, Edward Sharpe, Ed Sheeran and other folk-inspired acts next to rock best-sellers on radio and the charts. There’s a demand for vocal-front, melody-front songs with roots instruments that is being met.

Oh, also, a fun fact of this footage: it answers the question to all those who Google query “Phillip Phillips girlfriend.” Hannah Blackwell makes a couple of cameos.

Phillips will be working on his forthcoming, contractually obligated album after he’s done with this AI tour, which runs through mid-September.

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