Foxes

Over the last few years, young Louisa Allen aka Foxes has taken the musical world quite by storm. Blowing up with her collaboration with Zedd’s track, Clarity, she’s had a couple albums of albums hit the Top 20 and has toured the States as well as worked with Giorgio Moroder and bagged herself a Guinness World Record for the most gigs played in the most places within the shortest time (seven gigs in seven cities in one day – phew). She’s managed to keep her feet on the ground despite being thrust into the hectic and competitive worlds of fashion and music, and we had a chat ahead of her Waterfront date this month.

You grew up in Southampton and started writing songs when you were 14. What was the music scene like in Southampton then? Did you get to go to gigs?

It’s funny cos it wasn’t really Southampton that made me musical and I wasn’t really involved in the music scene there very much. I was just writing on my own in my room hidden away, and it was only when I moved to London that I started making music openly. The music scene was well respected and there were a lot of good gigs at places like The Joiners but I never really went when I lived there.

So your first big success in the industry came when Zedd asked you to do vocals on his single Clarity back in 2013 and it did incredibly well. How did it make you feel when it took off in such a big way?

I remember doing Clarity in a bedroom on my Logik Pro on a normal mic, and so it all felt a bit mad when it was so successful. Neither Zedd nor I expected it, but it just sort of gradually took off in its own way. It took on a life of its own, and looking back I don’t think I realised at the time how far the song would really travel.

Who are your musical inspirations?

I grew up listening to a lot of different artists. I was obsessed with Patti Smith, Bjork and Kate Bush when I was a lot younger; I loved for their lyrics and artistry. But then I also loved Eminem and The Spice Girls. I also liked a lot of jazz. It was mostly jazz, pop, rap and house music that I liked, a bit of everything.

That’s a wide range of music there! How do you see your sound developing as you get older?

The first album will always be a good base of what I wanted to achieve and the sound I wanted to have. I don’t think I’ll ever lose elements of that. But yes, I think you’re right; as I get older it has started to change. I think I might become a bit less pop. I definitely wanted to create a poppier album this time round, and have a go at writing pop music that felt emotional and a bit different at the same time.  As I develop it might become less produced and more vocally driven..but we’ll see.

I very much like the acoustic version of Devil Side you put up on YouTube. I wondered if that pared down sound might be more what you move into in the future.

It’s because when I started off when I was 15 that’s what I was really into; I wrote a lot of music on the piano and it was more about singing and everything being more instrumental. I went on to explore different sounds and different ways of producing music and I think maybe I’m now coming back to what I started off doing. After doing something like Clarity it was quite difficult to then create a new sound so I wanted to make sure I had that sound before I was just a featured artist.

You’ve done a lot already at quite a young age – moved to London, toured the US and released two albums. Do you sometimes feel overwhelmed by your lifestyle or have you managed to keep your feet on the ground?

I’ve definitely learnt to keep things normal and it’s made me able to come to terms with things and handle things a little bit better, rather than if I’d just indulged myself or jumped in the deep end of music. It’s good to have that separation for sure. It’s strange because I really jumped in quickly and didn’t realise until now how mad 2013 onwards was, and I was at an interesting age to experience a lot of those things and to find my feet. I was running around finding my feet really!

The three singles released from your first album Glorious all went Top 20. When you were writing Youth, Let Go For Tonight and Holding Onto Heaven could you tell they would be the big ones?

When I did Glorious I remember thinking the album was more alternative, but the record label considered it to be more poppy. I remember thinking that it was strange that it was going to be played on daytime radio but then I guess the singles naturally did quite well, which was a real shock for me at that stage.