Pop always works best when there’s a beating, sometimes bleeding, heart at the centre of it. The power of the dichotomy of soaring pop melodies anchored by melancholia is something Foxes, aka 22-year-old singer and songwriter Louisa Rose Allen, knows only too well. “I always write melancholy songs but I like happy-sad,” she explains. “Songs that make you feel like everything’s shit at the beginning and then everything’s great by the end. It’s that hope. I’m a big fan of that sort of thing and I think I live my life a bit like that.” It’s there in spades on her new single Youth, a sky-scraping ode to grabbing your chances set to plaintive piano and echo-laden beats, and on the gargantuan Zedd collaboration, Clarity, which has soundtracked the summer in America and recently found itself nestled happily in the Billboard Top Ten. Youth specifically has a special place in the story of how Foxes went from singing at open mic nights to performing rapturously received shows at SXSW and being name-checked as one to watch by global megastar, Katy Perry (“It feels really really unreal, it’s crazy,” she says in a daze). Originally released alongside Home as a 7” vinyl single by hugely respected pop label Neon Gold, not only did Youth get her the attention of Ms Perry, it was also the song that caught the ear of Lady Gaga-collaborator Zedd, UK production gurus Rudimental (Foxes appears on their current single Right Here) and also Pete Wentz of Fall Out Boy who stopped his birthday party to ask a friend who was on the stereo before demanding she appear on the band’s new number one selling album (which she does on a song called Just One Yesterday, which they performed together for the first time live at Reading Festival last month). “There’s a lot that’s come from Youth,” she says with a slight hint of understatement. “For me, it makes sense to lead with it as the starting point after all of the featuring stuff. It’s where it all began and it’s what I’m most about – it makes the most sense.”
Foxes – Beauty Queen
For Foxes, music isn’t just a hobby or a passing phase, it’s something she’s always wanted to do without really realising it. Her uniqueness comes not from stomping about making everyone aware of her – she’s been there and done that round Auntie Joan’s at Christmas – but from quietly and subtly making you fall in love with her songs. “I’m not desperate for the fame. I don’t want that part, I just want to make music,” she states firmly. “I’ve learnt so much this past year and now is the best time for me to be putting stuff out. I had a lot to learn and a lot of life experiences to go through and it’s a better album because of it. I’m more ready for it now. For whatever happens.” A quick pause, before she adds: “I want to make this sort of music for the rest of my life.” Something suggests she will do just that.
Foxes – Beauty Queen Lyrics:
Why are we so obsessed with cutting skin(?)
When the real things in our lives can’t get in
Marching to the same drum
Every single beat’s gone
I can hear the dark days coming
Another generation
Fighting for attention
Can’t you see I’m tired of running?
There’s a house in the forest
Where her days are forgotten
By the lake, she dropped her dreams
And now they’ve sunk to the bottom
Oh, beauty queen
It’s only skin deep
It’s only thin sheets
There’s no audience
Oh, beauty queen
Something’s telling me
That you were never meant to be
Trapped in time
Why are we holding hands like paper chains?
Why are we so content to stay the same?
Marching to the same drum
Every single beat’s gone
I can hear the dark days coming
Another generation
Fighting for attention
Can’t you see I’m tired of running?
There’s a girl I remember
Who was everyone’s dream
Now her face has become her
It’s the saddest thing you’ll ever see
Oh, beauty queen
It’s only skin deep
It’s only thin sheets
There’s no audience
Oh, beauty queen
Something’s telling me
That you were never meant to be
Trapped in time
There’s a house in the forest
Where her days are forgotten
By the lake she dropped her dreams
Now they’ve sunk to the bottom
Oh, oh oh oh oh oh
Oh, oh oh oh oh oh
Oh, oh oh oh oh
Oh, oh oh oh oh oh
Oh, beauty queen
It’s only skin deep
It’s only thin sheets
There’s no audience
Oh, beauty queen
Something’s telling me
That you were never meant to be
Trapped in time.
