Songfacts®:

• Though Clean Bandit's cellist Grace Chatto occasionally sings, the English trio rely on outsiders to be their main vocalists. On this dance pop bop, British singer-songwriter Mabel and American rapper/singer 24kGoldn are their guests.
• The song has nothing to do with a certain social media ap. Instead, Mabel croons about her infatuation with a guy she can't get out of her mind.
  
  Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock
  24/7, got you on my mind
  Darling, I don't have the time
  My body wants you night and day
  
  So fixated is she with the man, she thinks about him 24 hours a day.
• While Mabel wants her preoccupation with the guy to disappear, 24kGoldn takes a more proactive stance. He invites the girl he's obsessed with to hook up with him: "24/7 I got a place with your name on it."
• Clean Bandit's Grace Chatto and Jack Patterson wrote the song with Mabel, 24kGoldn and Camille "Kamille" Purcell. Kamille, who also helped pen their UK #1 hit "Solo," is a regular Little Mix collaborator, including on their chart-topping singles "Black Magic" and "Shout Out To My Ex."
• The five songwriters penned "Tick Tock" just before the 2020 coronavirus quarantine began. Clean Bandit's go-to producer Mark Ralphs ("Rockabye," "Symphony") then helped complete the track.
• Grace Chatto told The Daily Star's Wired column about the song's inspiration: "We wrote it just before the pandemic and I was feeling a little obsessed with a guy - you know that annoying thing where you don't wanna be obsessed but you are?"