Fovvs

**Andrew Robert "Andy" Fowler** (born 16 February 1994), professionally known as **Fovvs**, is an English singer-songwriter and musician from Stockport, Manchester, UK. He was formerly a member of Monroe (2012-2013), Overload Generation (2014-2015), and RoadTrip (2015-2020). His song, "Jekyll and Hyde", is planned to be released as his debut solo single.

When he was six years old, he began to learn how to play the guitar, and took lessons until the age of fifteen. The first guitar he received was a Fender, which his mother bought for him. It was an acoustic guitar, followed by the electric guitar. He played the piano in high school, learned the violin when he wanted to become a session musician, and played percussion after seeing artist acoustic live and in his school's orchestra. He studied music as one of his GCSEs and would have gone to the Royal Northern College of Music, but decided to defer his enrolment.

## Early life

> I was brought up with a single mother. […] [She] was better than an individual mother and father. She raised me to more than the best of her abilities.
>
> Fowler, on his upbringing

Andrew Robert Fowler was born on 16 February 1994 in Manchester, England, to Lesley Fowler. His father left them when he was young, and he was raised by his mother during his formative years in Stockport. He admitted that he saw his father several times, though never reached out, having had an estranged relationship.

Around the age of 17, Fovvs was diagnosed with depression and took counselling. He relapsed after six months, but wanted to overcome it himself without medication, taking two and a half years to battle it.

## Career

### 2013–2015: Career beginnings

He did local gigs for a while as an acoustic act, performing cover songs including Bon Iver's version of "I Can't Make You Love Me" and Fountains of Wayne's "Stacy's Mom" before moving to Reading, Berkshire, to enter the music industry. Fovvs explained of being in a bad place mentally, and his mother visited him. They went to a pub, and he performed Stevie Wonder's "Superstition", the audience responding positively, which ultimately made him realise music was a career he wanted to pursue. From December 2012 to September 2013, he was briefly in the quartet group Monroe before he was taken in by artist manager Blair Dreelan and became a guitarist for Harvey Cantwell.

On 5 April 2014, Fowler was introduced as the fifth member of the boy band Overload Generation. The group competed on the 11th UK series of *The X Factor* and moved on to perform their original song "No No No" for their Arena audition, sending them to bootcamp, and were brought back by Mel B as the groups' Wild Card. They were eliminated after landing in the sing-off with Stephanie Nala and finished fifteenth place. In January 2015, the band announced their split over social media. It was cited as a struggle with mental health since *The X Factor*, and financial issues, where the manager claimed of losing money on them.

Fovvs named it being one of the moments that has shaped him, where it was difficult to come back after facing rejection. He later joked that they were the first act to be voted out three times in one year on the show. During this period, he composed songs in his spare time, including "Rescue", "Lay My Hat", and "Maps", the latter two uploaded to his Facebook. He explained how the lyrics in "Maps" are written as a love song but drawn from his personal experience with taking therapy, and the highs and lows after *The X Factor*. He headlined as a solo act for ViewMyGig in early 2015, performing "Song About a Songwriter", "Sweet Nothings", and "Maps" live for the first time.

### 2015–2020: RoadTrip

In March 2015, Fovvs was revealed as the first member of a new musical project, assembled as a five-piece group in November 2016. They primarily uploaded cover songs of popular artists to YouTube, gaining traction from online, though failed to secure a record deal. Together, RoadTrip released two demo EPs in 2017 and went on multiple headline and support tours around the United Kingdom and Ireland. In August 2018, they released their debut and only single, "Take This Home", accompanied by its official music video in December. After a change to the group's lineup in April 2019, their third extended play *Dynamite* was dropped in mid-June, followed by the release of its acoustic version in September. Another lineup change occurred during December 2019, before RoadTrip announced their upcoming fifth EP on 23 February 2020, along with the release of a music video for one of its tracks, "Me and You". Their record *White Label* only contained three tracks; their shortest and final project together. Several months later in May, it was publicly announced of the band's split, attributed to mental health, financial, and management issues.

### 2020–present: Solo career

Fovvs took a hiatus from his music career, attributed mostly to the unpredictability with COVID-19, and expected not to release any music until it was over; however, he suggested that he would try to put out content in 2021, still taking the necessary precautions. He saved up money for three songwriting sessions, that turned into five, which took place in June 2021. He had several concept pieces that were potentially made to be released, though these were scrapped and in favour of new originals no one has heard of before. He wrote three songs and recorded vocals for the last two days, with "Jekyll and Hyde" chosen to be his debut single as a soloist. He mentioned, "I don't just wanna write singer-songwriter songs […] I wanna work on something that pushes me creatively, and I think I've done that".

## Artistry

He grew up listening to musicians Charlie Simpson and Newton Faulkner, the rock band Fall Out Boy, and learned songs by guitarists Masaaki Kishibe and Andy McKee. Musicians that inspired him before entering the pop world included the artists Faulkner, Max Milner, and JP Cooper, all of whom he referred to as "a guy and a guitar, who wrote their music". He has incorporated the percussive style of guitar playing in his performances, and once said that Casey Abrams was someone he aspired to be like as a songwriter. He has cited Brendon Urie from Panic! at the Disco as an influence both performance-wise and vocally. Other cited influences for him include Freddie Mercury and Jon Bellion.

Subjects in the music he's written include divorced parents, alcoholism, bipolar disorder, and suicidal ideation. Contrary to popular belief, he noted that most of his songs were conceptual, rather than autobiographical.

## Personal life

His nickname 'Fovvs' derives from his surname, with the 'w' looking like two v's. He supports the football club Manchester United. In 2014, he got his first tattoo around his right ankle, 'The ageing superhero in me is tired', a lyric from Newton Faulkner's "Ageing Superhero". He named it to be his favourite song, as it helped him cope in a dark period of his life.

On 28 May 2016, his grandmother passed away. On 4 April 2019, his father died. Near the end of that month on the 22nd, Fowler paid tribute in the form of music. The song was one he learned on the guitar when he was younger, called "For My Father" by Andy McKee. In January 2023, he stated that his uncle passed away.

In the beginning of RoadTrip, he developed an eating disorder. He reflected in 2019, "When I got home, although I was starving, I―something in my head told me you are not allowed to eat. 'Cause you've just done all this work and no matter what you eat is healthy, you can't put food into your body because your body is just so exhausted that you can't ruin the work you've just done. […] You should never put yourself through that to conform to any sort of constraints that society has".

He has the motto, "if it ends in '-ism', it isn't welcome", towards all forms of discrimination. He has once said, concerning gender norms, "I'm a lad. 'A supposed lad'. I like football. I like a whiskey. I like going to the bar with my mates and putting the sports on. […] And then I come online, and I am PG, and extrovert, and flamboyant. So, am I a lad? No, not really. Does it matter? No, not really". He distanced himself from the label 'influencer', stating in an interview, "[Y]ou can influence someone to wear something, or you can influence someone to be anti-discriminatory, or accepting of races, and genders, and sexualities, and stuff like that. And I think that I made the decision very early on that my social media will be 'I'm a musician, not an influencer, and I accept everyone, and I'd love it if everyone else did, as well'". In 2021, Fovvs donated to his hometown's independent charity, Stockport and District Mind, in support of mental health services. He also played on one of the rotation teams for Hashtag United's 24-Hour Football Match that raises awareness of men's health issues, in aid of Movember.

### Controversies

On 11 March 2018, RoadTrip uploaded their "These Days" Rudimental cover music video to YouTube. When the video was removed from their channel several months later, fans theorised it was because people were commenting on Fowler's weight. Fowler clarified that the comments were not the reason, and requested for no drama. The video was sometime republished afterwards. In 2019, Fovvs suggested that fans who supported the band as an entity could expand out of having "lanes". This stirred displeasure from some individuals within the fandom, and he elaborated that he meant for fans to support everyone, and understood of people having favourites. It followed by his break from online.

Despite confirming he was straight multiple times, there had been great speculation of Fowler's sexuality, primarily within the RoadTrip fandom. In a 2019 livestream, Fovvs said, "I've had to come out because apparently it's a thing you have to do based on your sexuality. But like I said, I won't rule anything out based on gender". This was taken out of context and led to confusion, though afterwards reiterated he was straight. He continued that it should not matter the gender of the person he dated in the first place. On 30 November 2019, when asked if he ever doubted his sexuality, he responded "no" and that he "experimented with it, [and] didn't like it". An anonymous account since 2019 started to specifically target Fovvs online, spreading homophobic and transphobic rhetoric via comments on TikTok and Instagram livestreams; Fovvs would promptly remove the individual from livestreams for usage of slurs, and did not acknowledge the person over social media. Later on, the same user claimed he was gay, and created homophobic posts on Instagram (the account mocked a fan who committed suicide, bullied for their sexuality), along with a few edited videos of Fovvs on YouTube that falsely out him. On 3 February 2020, Fovvs addressed to Twitter that he was the only one who knew his sexual orientation, and no one should decide or assume for him. He added that some of the online users were "hetrophobic [*sic*]", and upon facing backlash for the word, consequently deleted the tweet.

## References

1. ↑ "Fovvs (@fovvs)". *Twitch*. 30 June 2021.
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 "RoadTrip (@roadtrip)". *TikTok*. 27 February 2019.
3. ↑ "RoadTrip (@roadtrip)". *TikTok*. 16 May 2018.
4. ↑ "Fovvs (@fovvs)". *Twitch*. 1 November 2020.
5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 "RoadTrip Interview: Andy Fowler". *YouTube*. 25 April 2020.
6. ↑ "Fovvs (@fovvs)". *Twitch*. 5 February 2021.
7. ↑ "RoadTrip (@roadtrip)". *Twitter*. 1 June 2016.
8. ↑ "Fovvs (@fovvs)". *Instagram*. 22 April 2019.
9. ↑ "Fovvs (@fovvs)". *Twitch*. 16 August 2021.
10. ↑ "Hashtag United's 24 Hour Charity Football Match". *Movember*.
11. ↑ "RoadTrip (@roadtrip)". *TikTok*. 11 November 2018.
12. ↑ "RoadTrip (@RoadTripTV)". *Twitter*. 13 November 2018.
13. ↑ "RoadTrip (@roadtrip)". *TikTok*. 18 August 2019.
14. ↑ "RoadTrip (@roadtrip)". *TikTok*. 30 November 2019.
15. ↑ "Fovvs (@fovvs)". *Twitter*. 3 February 2020.