Andy & The Odd Socks Album Review and Q&A's

You probably read the title of this review and thought, who are Andy and the Odd Socks?! Well if you have children of a pre-school then you will definitely know Andy - Andy Day of CBeebies fame!

Regular readers of this blog will know that we love Andy, he is Elliot's favourite person on CBeebies and I couldn't possibly begin to tell you how many dinosaur adventures we have sat through! When I saw that he had made an album I knew the likelyhood of us getting it was quite high...!

Andy's album is called "Who Invited This Lot" and was released last month however we were able to pick up a copy when we met Andy at the Festival of Nature, Bristol back in June.

The tracklisting is as follows:

- Aliens
- Unique
- Groovy Hoover
- Battle Robot Rapper
- Odd Sock
- Dinosaur Football Legend Megamatch
- Cheeky Friends
- Wizard of Sound
- No One's Feeling Sorry for Me
- Ninja Pig
- Pirates

As you can see from the song names, there's no nursery rhymes here and every song is an original! For me this was a massive massive plus - I get sick and tired of hearing Incy Wincy Spider or The Wheels on the Bus, there are loads of children's CD's like that and it's good to have something a bit different!

All the songs are cleverly written and funny. Take Cheeky Friends for example - it's about bums! And you know what little boys are like with toilet humour - for Elliot, this was an instant hit because Andy sings about the "cheeky bum" song!

I asked Elliot what his favourite song on the album was and he said he liked the Dinosaur Football Legend Mega Match because it was about dinosaurs. And football. Two of his favourite things! Actually, this is one of my favourites too - the chorus is so catchy, you'll be humming it all day :)

I think it's rare to get an album that both pre-schoolers and adults would enjoy and I think Andy's done really well here to appeal to all ages. It's become one of our most listened to CD's and gets a big thumbs up from me and Elliot!

Q&A's

We were able to send a few questions over to Andy so here's what he had to say....

What inspired you to make an album?

I've wanted to make a children's album for a long time – one that can be listened to and enjoyed by all ages. I remember loving the Simpson’s album when I was younger – I still know the words to the songs! I then met music producers, Bunkersonix, aka Rob David and Dan Delor, and loved their music and their writing, we became good friends and decided to make the album.. it took 2 years to put together as we are all so busy! We wanted to create an album that was a bit like a mini Mighty Boosh mixed with a mini Flight of the Conchords … I hope we have achieved that!

 Who are your musical heroes?

i love soul music/rock and dance, basically anything to get you up and dancing.... so James Brown, Marvin Gaye, Freddie Mercury, Muse…..

 If you could duet with anybody, who would it be?

Jason Mraz... i love his music, or it would have been Freddie Mercury in another life

 Will you be doing any live shows to tie in with the album?

We are working on some fun musical shows based on the song characters and hope to take it live next year (Woohoo, we look forward to this!)

You can find out more here: http://andyandtheoddsocks.co.uk/