Tuesday 3 September 2013

Catching Foxes...


Music recognition is a wonderful thing.  With the likes of Shazam and Soundhound, both free apps available on your smartphone, you can almost instantly find out what that song is on a TV advert or playing as background music in a shop.

 

My wife and I use this all the time.  Our blu-ray player even has a button on it that does the same thing - if we're watching something through it (either a disc or streaming video), we can press the button and it'll whizz happily away, across the internet, to tell us the track, artist and album.

 

Of course, on our smartphones (my iPhone and my wife's Samsung), we can also get links to go and buy the song too.

 

So.

 

Saturday night, we were watching that other, epic, music show (!) X-Factor (the UK version) in bed after a long day.  There was the usual mish-mash of the appalling, mediocre and brilliant.  The ad break came on - don't you find they seem to have so many more than usual when these shows are on?  They wouldn't be doing it to rake in a ton more money, would they?  Anywho.  We were chatting away when the Debenhams commercial appeared.  The background music immediately caught the ear of my wife (she's so much better than I at picking up recognising background music) so she whipped out her phone and Shazamed it.

 

'Shazamed'.  I wouldn't be surprised if that word appeared in the Oxford English Dictionary.  Let's face it, they've slotted in 'Twerking'...

 

Anywho-be-do.  Debenhams.  The ad.  Shazaming.  The song, as it turned out, was 'Youth' by Foxes.  Who?  Never heard of them.  As we have similar taste in music (my wife and I, not Foxes and I), for roughly the next hour, we (again, my wife and I...) searched for and listened to all the music they had, including Youtube videos and acoustic versions.  We thought almost all of it was excellent, particularly Youth and Warrior.

 

I had a quick search on the off chance that they might be touring and, lo and behold, they are.  A quick tap-tap (and a run downstairs for my wallet) and we'd booked to see them in Manchester next month.

 

Foxes is actually not a 'them' but a 'her' or a 'she'.  Louisa Rosa Allen (good last name even though you've spelled it wrong) is a pretty 24 year old singer with a fab quirkiness to her voice.  Just when we'd thought there wasn't really anyone else we'd like to go see in concert (after 30 Seconds to Mars in November), we came across, accidentally, this little gem.

 

Like I said.  Music recognition is a wonderful thing.

 

You can follow Foxes on Twitter at: @iamfoxes and on Facebook at:http://www.facebook.com/iamfoxes

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