Songfacts®:

• After touring extensively in support of their debut album, We Started Nothing, the Ting Tings (Katie White and Jules De Martino) retired to Berlin to begin work on their sophomore set. A year later, unsettled by their label's excitement over its commercial prospects, the pair scrapped their work and relocated to southern Spain. At the start of 2011, The Ting Tings were pointed in the direction of the Beastie Boys album, Paul's Boutique and found themselves fascinated by its many nuances. It encouraged the duo to allow themselves a freedom to move around musically - thus the title of their second album, Sounds From Nowheresville, which includes the song "Soul Killing."
• The song features horns, a bouncy reggae vibe and the squeak of a rocking chair as percussion as well as the band's signature treble-heavy guitar. "'Soul Killing' is about frustration in this biz. This is a real squeaking rocking-chair song. Don't let anyone shoot you down!!!" singer and guitarist Katie White told Spinner.
• Ting Tings multi-instrumentalist Jules De Martino told The Independent why the duo used the squeaking chair as part of their percussion. "We don't have any vocal booth," he explained, "so sometimes Katie just has a quilt over her head and sings standing next to the control desk. We'd hear this squeak on the track, and we realized that every time I sat and pressed record, it'd go 'eeuuk.'"
  
  On 'Soul Killing,' there seemed to be something missing from the ska groove, apart from the bit when Katie was about to sing.
  
  "We analyzed the good bit and found it was this squeaking chair," De Martino added. "So we miked the chair up and I recorded it through the whole track, and it worked perfectly."