Foals: "Wake Me Up is for the dance floor"

4 November 2021, 22:28 | Updated: 5 November 2021, 13:35

Yannis from Foals talks about their Wake Me Up single

By Jenny Mensah

Frontman Yannis Philippakis has spoken about the band's brand new single and revealed we can expect a new album next year.

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Foals have shared their comeback single Wake Me Up and revealed it was their post-lockdown "dance floor" track.

The official video for the single premiered this Thursday (4 November) and Yannis Philippakis spoke to Radio X's George Godfrey about the inspiration behind it.

"The song is for the dance floor, really," explained Yannis. "For our idea of the dance floor. We wrote it during the second lockdown and we were in south London and we had access to a little small studio.

"And obviously as everyone knows, it was a pretty bleak time and it was kind of depressing and we didn't really want to add to any of that heaviness.

He continued: "We just wanted to... selfishly for ourselves... write music that would cheer us up. You know, so that we we'd go into the room, we'd shut the door and we could just be transported to somewhere else and transport ourselves to an imagined future where us and our mates would be back on the dance floor, and people would be having house parties and you could go to the pub, and all of the stuff that we were missing."

"So basically, the tune was kind of written for that. In a way it was written for the re-emergence of the world."

Watch the official video for Wake Me Up here:

FOALS - Wake Me Up [Official Music Video]

Asked about the band's decision to debut the track live under the working title Nova, Yannis said: "We played it three or four times over the summer.

"We'd been working on new music up until those shows, so we thought 'let's try something new' and also we just thought it would be the perfect kind of song for people getting back together again for the first time and it went down a storm".

Foals say their Wake Me Up singer went down a storm live. Picture: Ed Cooke/Press

The Oxford-formed band are six albums down with their seventh on its way, and asked if there's any tracks they miss playing in their setlist, Yannis told George: "Yeah, there's loads to be honest.

"In a perfect world I'd love us to play all 70 songs and then be able to just on a night go, 'right let's play Big Big Love or Antidotes, or let's play Milk And Black Spiders off Holy Fire or whatever, but it's just impossible."

He added: "I think if there's a particular song that deserves a comeback as it were, we've got a song on total Life Forever called Afterglow that I know lots of fans want to hear again, so that would be cool to resuscitate."

Yannis from Foals give update on new album and "stomping" new tunes

However, the Numbers singer knows there's some songs that he just doesn't think the band can drop from the setlist, so adding lesser known tracks to the set always has drawbacks.

"We do try and switch it out a fair bit," the frontman revealed. "But then we don't feel like we can drop some of the big big hits in order to make room, so it's always a balance."

As for the title or a release date for their seventh studio album, Yannis is keeping very coy, but has said a new record and "lots more music" can be expected in 2022.

"We're not quite at that stage yet," he told Radio X. "We're close. We're close. That's what I can say. We're kinda messing around with titles. We're actually still messing around with what the album is actually going to be and we're doing the final stages, but they'll be lots more music coming out next year and there will be an album out next year.

Watch our full interview here: