Hello! Fashion speaks to singer/songwriter Foxes who, after a three-year “game-changing hiatus” from music in 2017, is back with a new album.
Before her timeout, the artist, whose real name is Lou, had spent eight years consumed in her artist persona, Foxes. In that time, she released two studio albums, Glorious and All I Need, collaborated with Zedd on Grammy-winning Clarity, released six UK top 40 singles, and wrote lyrics for Rudimental, Kygo, Sub Focus and Giorgio Moroder.
“The three years definitely happened for a reason. I needed to take a pause to realign my life – what I was doing and why. I can’t describe how it is to be back, but I’m now properly in the game again.”
Foxes wears Dior for her Hello! fashion cover shoot
Lou was just 19 when things quickly started to accelerate. Her sister, Holly, had persuaded her to abandon the beauty therapy course she’d enrolled on in her hometown of Hampshire, move to London and sleep on her sofa to pursue her ambition of becoming a musician. She began doing open-mic nights and using SoundCloud to upload demos.
“A sync company somehow heard some of my very early tracks and ended up using them on the last series of Gossip Girl. I’d been a really massive fan of the show and remember thinking, this is just mental. I signed a major record deal with Sony very soon after that.”
Foxes performs at The Plug in Sheffield in 2016
But the big game-changer came when German DJ and record producer Zedd approached her to collaborate on single Clarity, which peaked at number eight on the US Billboard charts, reached number one on the Dance chart and proceeded to win Best Dance Recording at the 56th Grammy Awards.
“It was another one of those moments. I was in east London, seeing what was happening in America, but I wasn’t there to be in it or hear it being played on the radio. It was a big turning point, and it was only really when I arrived at the Grammys that I realised [the magnitude].
Foxes at the Sonia Rykiel show at Paris Fashion Week
But then came a point that having spent her 20s enveloped in the industry, she began to realise she had perhaps missed out on some life experiences. “It’s funny because I’d done a lot, but it was almost in a guarded way because it was within music.
“So, it wasn’t just running off and making mistakes without any pressure. During my time off, it may sound corny, but I did a lot of soul searching and a lot of grounding – and I guess started living an adult life that wasn’t just in the industry.”
VIDEO: Watch Foxes on her HFM cover shoot
During her hiatus, she did just that. “I ended up doing some mental stuff, like going to a couple of songwriting camps in the Nicaraguan jungle, surrounded by lots of strange animals. There I could write without the pressure. That was nice because it didn’t matter if it was good, or awful – I was doing it because I loved it.”
And plenty of those songs made it onto her upcoming album and are existing in the real world, she tells us.
Listen to Foxes' new EP Friends In The Corner
Hello! Fashion’s July/August issue is out now.
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