Around Town

Album: Listen (2014)
Charted: 35
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Songfacts®:

  • This gospel choir-driven song kick-started Kooks' fourth studio album, Listen, which was produced by the band's frontman Luke Pritchard with the hip-hop artist Inflo. "It was like a catalyst. I didn't know if it was going to be a Kooks [song] or if it was going to be a side thing, because it seemed so different," Pritchard told The Independent. "It was like electric church music. I'd written that before I'd even met Inflo, and then he heard it and said, 'Okay, we can cross-pollinate here musically'. Everything stemmed from it."
  • The song's music video was directed by Ryan Hope (2 Chainz ft. Pharrell, London Grammar, Bombay Bicycle Club). It stars Christopher Fairbank (The Fifth Element, Alien 3, Pirates of the Carribean: On Stranger Tides) and Pom Klementieff (Oldboy, Loup, Delicacy). Pritchard explained the creative approach they took when making the clip: "We decided rather than simply put a video to music we would do something more cinematic," he said. "It was very much a collaboration with director Ryan Hope. We wanted to evoke the directors Besson and Tarantino while also exploring themes of karma and the poem If."
  • Pritchard singled out this song to Q as a universal pick-me-up. "I want people listening to it walking down the street to lift their chin a bit higher," he told the magazine. "There's a rising-of-the-phoenix vibe!"

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