If you’re a human, and you interact through forms of social media, I promise you have pondered in the last month this question: What does the fox say?
Now, if you’re not part of the 169 million viewers who witnessed the original music video on the “TvNorge” page, then you, my friend, are certainly out of the loop.
The video begins with guests at a party dressed in animal costumes reciting their respective animal noises. However, the clip takes a directive turn to an estranged party guest who is doing a bit of soul searching-he is not sure what noise a fox makes and, therefore, feels left out. He solves this issue by deciding to do what any ’80s male protagonist character would do: dance. The rest of the film is full of leagues of foxes dancing, as well as an animated sassy fox.
Norwegian brothers Vegard and BÃ¥rd YlvisÃ¥ker, the creators and lead actors in “The Fox,” perform under the name Ylvis. As a duo, they were interviewed by Ellen DeGeneres and spoke about how this concept came to be.
“It’s the funnest story,” BÃ¥rd said, discussing how he and Vegard had made a deal with a music production company in Norway. “They asked us to do them a favor, and we asked them to do us a favor in return. So, we thought, okay, if we give them a crap idea, and we bring it back to the talk show in Norway and say, ‘Sorry guys, we had our window, we could have made a big hit, but we screwed up, and we made a song about a fox, I’m sorry.’…And it kind of backfired.”
In response to hearing “The Fox,” DeGeneres laughed as she said, “I don’t know a lot about Norway, but I’m gonna assume marijuana is legal there.”
“The Fox” climbed into many Top 10 charts around the globe, reaching number 6 on the US Billboard Hot 100. The music video for song has garnered well over 100 million views on YouTube since its release.
What comes across as an innocent question actually begs for a legitimate answer. The sound that a fox makes is mysterious; our children’s books never covered the echoes of a fox, giving us the perfect grounds to view this YouTube clip in our favor-we can relate to its hilarity. However, the best part about this music video is that it was intended to be the worst song ever created.
But for now, we will be left still to ponder: What does the fox say?
