News

New Dates For Owl City

• 19th Feb 2010

Due to a phenomenal demand for new dates following a complete sell out of Owl City's first UK tour this week, the chart topper announces his return to the UK this May with a show at Glasgow Barrowlands on the 8th and London's Shepherd's Bush Empire on the 9th!

It has been a fantastic start to the year for Owl City. After spending 3 weeks at No.1, 'Fireflies' remains at No.2 in the UK charts and the album 'Ocean Eyes', which was released on Monday, currently sits at No.5 in the album charts. The UK has quite clearly joined the rest of the world in tumbling head over heels for Owl City.

'Fireflies', which has sold over 3 million copies in the US, topped the Billboard chart – twice – and the iTunes chart in 7 countries, topped the UK charts on 24th January and remained at the top spot for 3 weeks, until it moved into second place last weekend behind The Sun's Haiti Charity Record – a position that Adam Young, the talented young man behind Owl City is more than happy about, “I'm fine that The Sun's charity single is selling more than me,” he says, “anything to help Haiti. It's a great cause.”

Young, who counts fellow surrealist Tim Burton in his ever growing list of admirers – so much so that he has just included his track 'The Technicolor Phase' in the forthcoming soundtrack to Alice in Wonderland – is modestly taking his latest chart topping success in his stride. “It hasn't quite sunk in yet and I suspect it never really will. It's surreal to think that a song I wrote in a basement in the middle of blustery Minnesota has made it as far as it has. Needless to say, I'm completely thrilled.”

It's hard to imagine how much better things could get for Adam Young right now. When the shy 23-year-old first uploaded a few synth-pop songs on to his MySpace profile in 2007, his Owl City project was just one of thousands of unknown acts in the web's worldwide hive of musical activity. Two-and-a-half years and one EP, two albums and over 50 million MySpace hits later, Owl City's 'Fireflies' single hit the No. 1 spot on the U.S. Billboard charts in early November 2009. It is the fastest-selling electronic/alternative track of all-time. Its parent album, the self-produced 'Ocean Eyes', has nestled happily in the U.S. Top Ten since its release in July, and, after confessing that playing his first shows left him with 'white knuckles', Adam is now confidently playing sold-out shows to a crowd who, as The NME observed, 'impressively, know every single word to every single song' and that 'squeals and shrieks with the kind of delight usually reserved for buffed-up boy bands'. The shy boy's dreamy DIY imaginings have become a bonafide pop phenomenon.

But even a cursory listen to the gorgeous synthetic gems on 'Ocean Eyes' reveals why Owl City has struck such a universal chord. Young has fashioned an elegant and seemingly effortless connection between fashionably arty, retro-nouveau electro pop and fresh-faced, sweetly melancholic hit factory songwriting. Owl City pop has a purity of purpose – an innocence – that breathes fresh air into the electro-pop revival.

“I can't believe how fast things have taken off,” Young marvels. “It seems like it was only yesterday I put a few songs from my first EP online and watched things begin to happen on their own. I never thought music could spread like mine did through the internet. I do know one thing though: I just wanted to keep creating. It's a lot of fun and it's the only thing in the world I'm good at. So it'd be a real shame to stop.” That it would. And this would be the bit where we implore you to watch Owl City make like a bird and fly.