The Ting Tings - 'Shut Up And Let Me Go'
I'm not sure if this still goes on but certainly when I was younger morning telly quite regularly featured ridiculously toned people in terrifying lycra shouting at members of the public to do aerobics. The lycra-wearer would always be incredibly upbeat as they yelled things like "FEEL THE BURN! THAT'S IT, FEEL THE BURN!" in a tone so frighteningly peppy it made the average children's TV presenter look morbidly depressed. This was the kind of traumatic spectacle that burns itself onto your childhood mind and occasionally recurs, like a terrible vision, in your adult life.
I'll admit I am not the most jolly person around, neither am I terribly enthusiastic about doing any more exercise than is necessary to get me to the nearest pub, so jaunty music apparently designed for jumping around to is not likely to tick a great number of my 'hooray!' boxes and indeed quite likely to head straight into the 'boo!' pile.
Consequently, I was never likely to be very able to understand the popularity of a group who, I suspect are mostly listened to by people on their mp3 players when they're in the gym.
Maybe I'm misjudging this, od course but I can't really honestly think of that many reasons besides some kind of masochistic exercise-related enforced 'THIS IS REALLY FUN HONEST' effort that anyone would want to listen to a song which sounds as much like smiling through gritted teeth as this one.
I understand that the lyrics are about a break up and as such, this is technically an entrant into the Emo In Disguise category, something I generally applaud but something about Katie Ting Tings shouting "I aint freakin', I aint fakin' this!" sounds more like "To the left! To the right! Work those thighs!" than an assertive statement regarding the end of a relationship. Clearly the Ting Tings create very kinetic music but there's some subtle differences between motivationally kinetic and fitness video kinetic, differences which I feel are lacking here.
I'm sure it's absolutely amazing if you really are listening to it in the gym; the stompy beat is probably great for keeping your squat thrusts in time or something and the jauntiness may the sort of thing you need to keep going as your hair pours sweat into your eyes. Outside some kind of montage of people getting hot summer bodies, though, this song really isn't doing anything to dispel my opinion that the Ting Tings are a band so perfectly crafted to have their music featured on adverts for large furniture chains that I actually find them almost frightening.
I'm sure they're very nice people - I really very much like the impression I got of Katie from and I have no doubt that a lot of people will absolutely love this. Frankly, though, I'm quite happy letting them keep all that frantic jumping around to themselves.
Download: Out now
CD Released: July 21st
(Hazel Robinson)
Comment number 1.
At 17th Jul 2008, kjkjk992 wrote:How could you possibly give kid rock 5/5 and this only 2/5, how??? were is the logic in that?
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Comment number 2.
At 17th Jul 2008, Fraser McAlpine - wrote:Easy! Two different people writing the reviews. This one's by Hazel, and I did Kid Rock.
I gave 'That's Not My Name' 6 stars, out of a possible 5, so let's not say the Ting Tings are doing badly out of us, mm?
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Comment number 3.
At 31st Jul 2008, beaumont118 wrote:The thing is with reviews it is opinion. The reviewers moreover. Whether the song is genius or crud is up to whoever listens to it. Some songs are great to us simply because of the band, or what memories or things we associate with them.
I think this is about the 3 stars mark. Perhaps 1 if you weigh in the 7-nation army copycat video.
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