Songfacts®:

• This individuality anthem was released as the second single from Fitz and The Tantrums' More Than Just a Dream album.
  
  "Crazy's what they think about me
  Ain't gonna stop because they tell me so.
  Cuz 99 miles per hour baby,
  Is how fast that I like to go."
  
  The song is a celebration of marching to a different beat.
• Ellen DeGeneres is a big fan of the song. It was featured as the backdrop to her one-take Oscar trailer and the chat show host invited Fitz and The Tantrums onto her show for a special birthday performance of the tune.
• The song's sassy lyrical content about walking to the sound of one's own drum and its upbeat instrumentation makes it perfect for media placement. Its appearances include these TV shows:
  
  The Umbrella Academy ("We Only See Each Other At Weddings And Funerals" - 2019)
  Grandfathered ("Pilot" - 2015)
  Suits ("Bad Faith" - 2013)
  The Vampire Diaries ("Handle With Care" - 2013)
  Royal Pains ("A Trismus Story" - 2013)
  
  And these movies:
  
  Love Over Distance (2017)
  Dallas Buyers Club (2013)
  Identity Thief (2013)
• Frontman Michael Fitzpatrick told Billboard magazine the story of the song: "That song started late at night when I'd come up with this annoyingly catchy whistle riff, and I was like, 'Wow, that's like crack cocaine,'" he recalled. "What we've always done is gone out and road-tested the songs even before the records came out, and you could just tell that this one had that magic around it."
• The song immortalizes the late Dr. Marc Abrams, who famously could be seen walking every day on the East Side of LA and passed away on July 22, 2010. Fitzpatrick explained he was known around Los Angeles' Silver Lake neighborhood for "speedwalking around in little short shirts, no shirt on, leather-tanned skin with a newspaper, morning, noon and night."
  
  "I never knew when the guy practiced medicine because all I ever saw was him walking around, every day," Fitzpatrick added. "So we took him as our hero character for the song to explore the idea of just what people's perceptions of someone can be and just having the courage to walk to the beat of your own drum, the sort of dark underbelly of what obsession and compulsion can mean."
• Aside from its placement in movies and TV shows, this has also shown up in commercials for Sprite, Walmart, Reebok, and Supercuts. It soundtracked ads for the 2014 Academy Awards and was used in that year's Major League Baseball postseason. From 2014 to 2017, it was the theme song to the MLB Network series High Heat.
• The song's suitability for visual mediums is a byproduct of Noelle Scaggs' songwriting style. Scaggs, the band's co-lead singer and songwriter, is a visual learner who creates cinematic imagery to get her feelings across. She explained in a 2023 Songfacts interview:
  
  "Not everybody can listen to a song, and it captures the way that it would if they saw it with something, where you can connect the dots on a meaning or see where the artist's head was at. A creative little picture. I always take that into account because I'm one of those people. I'm a visual learner. It's always really important to me to capture my emotions in a way that can be seen."
  
  A song isn't finished until the picture becomes clear in her mind. She said: "When I really think about songs, it's whether or not I can visualize what the song will look like on film, or how it will be conveyed in a visual sense. Is there a way of creating a human element to this song that you can see on screen? When I can do that, I know that a song is done."