Tick Tock
by Clean Bandit (featuring Mabel & 24kGoldn)

Album: released as a single (2020)
Charted: 8
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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?"

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