What Is The Fox Say Song

The Behind-the-Scenes Reality of the Ylvis Fox Song

The Fox (What Does the Fox Say?) is a 2013 novelty pop song by the Norwegian comedy duo Ylvis. It became one of the most viewed YouTube videos of all time, crossing 1.4 billion views. The song asks what sound a fox makes and proceeds to invent absurd answers like "ring-ding-ding-ding-dingeringeding" and "joff-tchoff-tchoff-tchoff-tchoff-tchoff." It was commissioned by Norwegian broadcaster NRK as part of their satirical talk show "Kvitt eller dobbelt." The song sits at roughly 3 minutes and 47 seconds long, produced by Steve Mac, who has worked with Ed Sheeran and One Direction. The production value is higher than you would expect from something that sounds like it was written in 20 minutes. There are layered synths, multiple key changes, and actual musical complexity underneath the ridiculous lyrics. I got dragged into this topic more times than I care to admit. Someone always finds me through a late-night YouTube rabbit hole and wants to know the actual fox sound, or they want the MP3, or they're asking whether Ylvis actually studied real fox vocalizations. Here is the straightforward answer: real foxes make a few distinct sounds. They yip, they bark, they scream (especially during mating season, which sounds genuinely disturbing), and they make a low-frequency "gecker" sound. None of those are even close to "wa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pow."

The Ylvis brothers, Vegard and Bård, have said in interviews that they intentionally made the sounds absurd. They weren't going for scientific accuracy. They were making comedy music in the tradition of "Weird Al" Yankovic and "The Lonely Island." The fact that it became a genuine global phenomenon caught literally everyone involved off guard. If you are looking to download the track, it is available on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, and Amazon Music. The official video is on Ylvis's YouTube channel. There are dozens of remixes and parodies, some of which are genuinely well-made. The Benny Benassi electro remix from 2014 pushed the song further into mainstream club rotation, which surprised nobody less than the original artists. One thing people don't realize about the song's structure is that it goes through at least four distinct key changes and shifts between major and minor tonalities in ways that would be considered sophisticated in a pop context. The bridge section with the "hatee-hatee-hatee" vocalization is actually built on a descending chromatic pattern. If you sit down and transpose the melody, it's not lazy songwriting. It's deliberately overproduced, which is part of the joke.

Here is where it gets messy in practice. The song's success created a bizarre licensing situation. Because it was released by NBC's Today Show and Ylvis's management, there are conflicting claims about who controls the master recording. If you are a content creator trying to license the track for a video or podcast, you will bounce between multiple rights holders. I spent three hours on hold with publishers trying to clear a simple synchronization license for a client's commercial spot, and I still ended up using a stock music alternative that cost 2 percent of what the Ylvis clearance would have required. Don't bother unless you have a large budget and a lot of patience. Another practical issue: the song ages poorly in certain contexts. It was peak 2013 internet culture. Using it as background music at an event in 2024 signals something very specific about the demographic you are targeting, and not always positively. A wedding playlist featuring this track reads differently depending on whether the couple is 35 or 55. Just be aware of what you are invoking when you drop it in. The fox sounds they list in the song — including "vovah-vovah-vahvovah," "supercalifragilisticexpialadocious," and the aforementioned "joff-tchoff" — have become shorthand in internet humor. You will see them referenced in everything from corporate team-building presentations to obscure Reddit threads. That cultural saturation is both the song's greatest achievement and its longest-term liability.

If your goal is simply to hear what a real fox sounds like, search for "red fox vocalizations" on xeno-canto.org. The recordings are raw and unpolished and nothing like the song. The actual science of fox communication involves territorial signaling, mating calls, and distress vocalizations. None of them rhyme. That's the whole point the Ylvis brothers were making, and it's worth remembering if anyone tries to use this song as a legitimate educational resource for wildlife biology.