Currently burning down servers at YouTube is the dance-pop single “The Fox” from the Norwegian sibling duo Ylvis. It’s sort of gimmicky and ridiculous and it’s sort of beautiful, too. I relish its spirit of fun, which billows without so much as a waft of mean spiritedness. The song plays on the absence (in English and presumably in Norwegian as well) of established onomatopoeia for representing fox sounds. This absence, along with the animal’s penchant for stealth, has given us the inaccurate impression of foxes being—like 99 out of 100 dance-pop celebs—creatures with no distinctive voice of their own. As Ylvis’ unhinged attempts at representing fox sounds make clear, however, the lack of ready-made phrases to signify fox noises results from the unusual (and varied) nature of fox calls themselves.
The verse melody is quite pretty, and Ylvis’ gekkering (onomatopoetic jargon for foxes’ fighting sounds) is quite good. This is what gives “The Fox” legs. Sure, one face of the song is tongue in cheek. But there’s a childlike innocence that suits its subject—that feels earnest and can be enjoyed that way.
Big blue eyes, pointy nose
Chasing mice and digging holes
Tiny paws, up the hill
Suddenly you’re standing still
Your fur is red, so beautiful
Like an angel in disguise…
They take the image too far, of course, and dive back into sending up the trope of the over-wrought pop paean to young love—fully in keeping with the “other” part of the song. It’s easy to roll with the flip, especially when they come to the next lines: “If you meet a friendly horse / Will you communicate by Mo-o-o-o-orse?” The staggering of the word “Morse” evokes the named code while playing with dance-music cliché of the stuttering sample—all in a single vocal take unembellished by keyboards or samples.
Satire is well and good, but the genesis of this song is something worthy of serious inquiry: the beauty of foxes. That we can laugh and sing along the way just makes it all the richer.
5 October 2013