Attracting Flies

Album: Body Music (2013)
Charted: 17
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Songfacts®:

  • AlunaGeorge are a duo comprising singer Aluna Francis and beatmaker George Reid, whose soul-influenced electronica has been dubbed "Popstep." Francis's first venture into the music industry came when she sang in a group called My Toys Like Me, whilst Reid was previously a guitarist in indie-math rock band "Colour". They met in June 2009, when Reid remixed My Toys Like Me's track "Sweetheart."
  • This is the third single from AlunaGeorge's debut album, Body Music. It finds Francis calling out an ex for telling untrue tales about her. "Little grey fairy tales and little white lies," she sings, "Everything you exhale is attracting flies." "[The songs] tend to be stories - stories people have told me that I can relate to," Francis told Billboard magazine of her lyrics. "Maybe the sentiment and the feelings can come from my experience. But in context, the inspiration for those songs tends to come from elsewhere."
  • The accompanying music video was directed by Emil Nava and sees the pair focusing on the fairy tale element of the song. We see AlunaGeorge put their urban spin on famous scenes from classic fantasy stories like Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, Goldilocks and Sleeping Beauty.
  • Francis told The Sun the story behind the song: "A friend had told me a tale of woe," she said. "I didn't feel like there was a place for me to tell her to get rid of him. So I came up with this metaphor when I was messing about on the piano. The chorus came first and I imagined the rest of the story."

    "I want people to be able to listen to something through and enjoy the melody," Francis continued, "then if there's something about the lyrics that catches someone's attention they can go back. It's a fun game to weave further meaning into lyrics that initially can come across as quite simple. 'Attracting Flies' is quite immature in a sense but within those lyrics there are different layers."

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