The Ting Tings’ 2008 hit That’s Not My Name has been given an unexpected new life on TikTok, where it was recently used by stars like The Rock, Will Smith, Christina Aguilera and Drew Barrymore for the soundtrack of a celebrity challenge.

When Katie White and Jules De Martino wrote That’s Not My Name in an old mill in Salford, they didn’t think it was anything special. “We thought we were still as bad as before,” De Martino recalled.

They certainly didn’t expect him to hang around for 15 years. But they’ve come to realize that their irresistibly fiery garage pop track, in which White expresses her frustration at being put down, is “one of those songs.”

“It’s now, we can admit, one of those songs that we hear in other bands of yesteryear that we say, ‘Ah, that’s still a cracking track,'” De Martino said, the drummer of the duo.

Vocalist and guitarist White adds, “It never quite goes away. It always does something in the world, whether it’s a movie sync or a TV commercial or…what the hell is it. that thing where they’re all wearing funny outfits and pretending to be someone else?”

The masked singer?

“Yeah. I remember when we wrote it, after about a year or two, our lawyer or our manager or somebody said, you wrote one of those songs. You just wrote one. We didn’t quite get it, but I think we do now.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1c2OfAzDTI

Proof it is indeed ‘one of those songs’ came when it returned to TikTok, first used by pet owners who added captions to the nicknames of their furry friends , then by Hollywood actors and singers.

The Ting Tings were “not in TikTok country at all” at the time, according to De Martino.

However, they had noticed a bit more activity than usual on their other social media channels. “After about a week or two, a friend said, ‘Do you know how many people do this? You really should check it out,'” White said.

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“And, yeah, we watched him and it was just amazing to watch him grow.”

De Martino adds: “Our phones just turned on and everything started going crazy again. We reviewed it and loved it.”

Clueless actress Alicia Silverstone started the celebrity trend, followed by Jennifer Garner, Jessica Alba, Jennifer Lopez, Kevin Bacon, Victoria Justice and Zooey Deschanel.

They sewed in clips from their best-known roles and added captions with their characters’ names — the “they call me” names. The singers chose clips that represented different eras or facets of their personalities (Shakira, for example, said the names they called her were “truth hip owner, mom, speaker, nerd, performer”).

Most posted the videos simply to celebrate their glorious career, but some were also apparently pointing out that they were more than the collection of characters they’ve been typecast and cataloged over the years.

That’s Not My Name was “a pretty fiery, empowering song,” White says. “For us, it was a bit of a frustration song and it was pretty raw emotion.”

When they wrote it, the duo had just risen from the ashes of a previous band that had won and then lost a major record deal.

“The song was really about feeling invisible because that moment happened,” De Martino said. “Katie thought, that’s it, this was our chance, we got signed and then dropped. That’s the end of this story. Let’s just make music.”

White adds: “I remember thinking, I can’t believe this, this is my career over at 23. We were living in Islington Mill and we thought, let’s lose ourselves in what we do.”

So it was a surprise when this song gave them a chance to succeed.

“A few months later, everyone wanted to come to the strange little machine room we were renting at the Moulin and sit on the floor and watch us play,” continues the singer.

“It was just me and Jules – Jules on drums, me on guitar. I’d only been playing it for three months, and if I didn’t know what I was doing, I’d put it behind my back and hit a bell. I just totally rode it. And then it got bigger.”

That’s Not My Name eventually went to number one in the UK and top 40 in the US. Their debut album We Started Something also topped the UK chart.

But “we decided that we were never going to make a record like that again,” says De Martino. “As musicians, we were slightly rebelling against the success of this one. And we were afraid to try and live up to that expectation again and again and again.”

So they went to Berlin to “go experiment” on the sequel, and have since released two other long performers, recorded between Los Angeles, London and Spain.

When That’s Not My Name resurfaced on TikTok last month, they were recording their fifth album in Ibiza. Missing UK radio stations, they had downloaded the Smooth FM app and were inspired by the soft-rock bands they heard on rotation, such as Fleetwood Mac, Toto, Steely Dan and Christopher Cross.

Titled Meadow, the album is “very different from all the other records we’ve done”, says De Martino. And they hope to tour with a full band to do justice to their new sound.

“Oddly enough, That’s Not My Name was written as a sort of country song,” White reveals. “If you play it on an acoustic [guitar], it’s so interesting how it has kind of a bluesy note to it, so it would really fit in if we played it in a bit more of an acoustic way. If we were to go out [on tour]that would be it.”

A mini Ting

There will be a new member of the entourage on the next tour – a 20-month-old girl, whom White dubs “a mini Ting”.

The couple previously avoided saying if they were romantic and musical partners. “We never particularly talked about it,” the singer says.

“We always wanted to keep it pretty separate from the music, but it’s kind of hard when you literally have a mini person. We’ve been together a long time now.”

The pair are now finishing the Meadow sessions in a studio they built themselves with the help of “a few buddies and tools” in southern Spain.

They also recycled the band’s old outfits in the DIY studio. “We have so much baggage from all of our tours. Mostly clothing, literally costume after costume. We actually use it as sound insulation,” says De Martino.

“We have all these rows of clothes and we put the studio in the middle because it’s really good soundproofing.”

They’re hoping a few new TikTok fans will give the resulting album a spin when it’s released this summer. Another way to make good use of past baggage.