It was released as the album's second single on 13 December in Italy, and on 13 June in the United Kingdom. It was the 10th-best-selling single of in the UK. Ezra told The Daily Telegraph that "Budapest" was "[his] first attempt to write a love song, and it uses the first three guitar chords [he] ever learned.
There's a lot to be said for that simplicity. But I didn't know you couldn't buy alcohol after 10 o'clock at night. So I ended up buying a bottle of like, rum, or something like that from a guy in a park so I could have something to drink at this party.
Anyway, I was meant to be getting a train to Budapest the next day, and I never got it because I was too hungover and didn't fancy it. So I wrote the song about being miles from Budapest. I've never even been over there, but [the song] was just huge on the radio. It kind of happened overnight. Then it went over [to] Germany and when we released it in the UK, it took off there as well.
With a tempo of bpm, the song "Budapest" is composed in the key of F major. Chris Willman of Billboard called it an "acoustically inclined, eminently hummable single". In , "Budapest" became a sleeper hit in the United States. It debuted at number 81 on the Billboard Hot in February , [ 9 ] and peaked at number 32 in May. It charted for 30 weeks on Adult Alternative Airplay , 10 of which were spent at the pole position; [ 10 ] in February , for the chart's 25th anniversary, Billboard ranked "Budapest" at number 12 on its list of the most successful songs in the chart's history.
An official music video for "Budapest" was first released onto YouTube on 21 April It consists of a large crowd of people all with different styles and accessories all standing motionless together in a tight-knit crowd, occasionally being inter-cut with footage of one of them doing something minor like shifting slightly where they stand, one of them sneezing gaining the attention of everyone around and George playing his guitar and singing to the camera with a smile.
