Storming The Charts #7: The Ting Tings

The Ting Tings
That's Not My Name

May 2007 brought about the first single release of little known Manchester duo The Ting Tings, Who with the help of Radio 1 and NME have just re-released the single after signing a major record deal with Sony BMG, which is sure to be a hot contender for the No. 1 spot this sunday.

With perhaps exceptions of The Enemy, not since late 2005 - when the Arctic Monkeys released 'I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor' - have I been this excited about a song I know being released into the UK charts. With the first release (a 500-copy limited release) now fetching prices of over £100 on eBay, The Ting Tings are quite literally one of the hottest new talents in the country at the moment.

They're music is not something that I usually warm to, but after I discovered their persona this time last year and after I started writing this blog back in January, I wrote a post about them because I was convinced they could be something massive. Admitedly, I wrote the post due to the face they were one of NME's big 10 this year, but I did not think that they could be a serious contender for a No. 1 single. Maybe top 5, but battling with the wrath of Rhianna after last years complete domination of the top spot is surely beyond them.

The song itself 'That's Not My Name' is a social critique about a young girl that band frontwoman Katie White used to go to school with called Stacey Pike. All the other girls in Katie's class used to call her Stacey Pike, simple because their names are similar and Katie would say: "but, that's not my name", hench the title of the song.

Tom Clarke once said that music reviewers constantly try to discover the meaning of lyrics are wasting their time. "I mean if you wake up really hungry and then decide you're gonna write a song that minute, chances are its gonna involve bacon... Rory Walker philosophy... say what you see, he had it right all those years ago."

Therefore it's just a catchy song, a fucking good catchy song to note, but just a catchy indie-pop song with no more intellect or energy behind it than a dosey poem for valentines day.

If the song reaches No. 1, it'll be a triumphant day for British music, in that people have gone out and bought a genuinely good song but a new and upcoming artist that wasn't written in a luxary 5 million pound recording studio by someone hired to write it, it was written by the artist themself, in probably Katie's bedroom. It's a well known fact that Richard Archer wrote Living For The Weekend in his bedroom he was brought up in, in his family home in Staines.