What Ever Happened to the Ting Tings
- Kristen Petronio
- Sep 22
- 6 min read
If you’re looking at the title of this blog and asking, “Who?” that is exactly why this blog exists. You may not recognize the group’s name, but if you are familiar with hits from the late 2000s, you might recognize their songs “That’s Not My Name” and “Shut Up and Let Me Go” (see below).
The Ting Tings are an English indie pop duo from Manchester who, despite seemingly falling off the face of the earth (or at least the hit charts), are actively still making music today, albeit with less popular songs. But before we get to where they are now, we have to talk about their story and why their songs aren’t hitting the Billboard charts anymore. Why did a group that was nominated for Best New Artist at the 2010 Grammy Awards fall off the radar? What happened? Let’s get into it.
The Ting Tings, consisting of Katie White and Jules De Martino, formed in 2007 with the duo choosing the name because Ting Ting was the name of White’s Chinese colleague, who told her that it sounded like the pronunciation of "bandstand" in Mandarin (Source). The band also chose this name because they discovered through research that the name also meant the "sound of innovation on an open mind.”
With the release of their first few singles, they built up momentum, with their first double-A single "That's Not My Name/Great DJ" and second single "Fruit Machine", on heavy rotation on British radio, including BBC 6 Music. What helped further put them on the map was their performance at the Glastonbury Festival in 2007 and a tour of universities in the UK. This led to them getting signed to Columbia Records. The group itself credits the radio station BBC Introducing for helping them get their big break.
The band's debut album, We Started Nothing, was released in May 2008 and entered the UK Albums Chart at #1, following the single "That's Not My Name", which topped the singles chart. Their single "Great DJ" also received significant airplay in the UK and reached the top 40 on the UK Singles Chart. As the band began touring outside the UK to Australia and New Zealand, the United States was getting exposed to their song “Shut Up and Let Me Go” courtesy of an Apple iPod commercial in late April 2008. This exposure helped the song peak at number 55 on the Billboard Hot 100 and get them all kinds of opportunities in the US, including a chance to be one of four performers who played small interludes consisting of remixes of past hits throughout the 2008 MTV Video Music Awards. The section from "Shut Up and Let Me Go" featured in the show included a performance with Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker and DJ AM.
In January 2009, Columbia Records released a U.S. single of "That's Not My Name" followed by a March/April U.S. concert tour. Their popularity continued to grow after supporting Pink on her Funhouse Tour, appearing on Saturday Night Live, and getting a nomination for Best New Artist at the 52nd Grammy Awards.
At this point, they’re at the height of their popularity. Their music videos are receiving awards and praise, record sales are skyrocketing, and people want more from them.
So, what happened?
To oversimplify, the duo got into their head about their next release. To explain further, we need to go back a bit. In the days before The Ting Tings formed, White and De Martino had a group with their friend Simon Templeman, called Dear Eskiimo, and they were signed to Mercury Records. When a changeover of directors and managers led to a management style that felt controlling, the group split up, leaving White and De Martino with a distrust of the music industry. So, when it was time to make their sophomore album and Columbia Records was expecting more pop hits, the group felt that pressure. Their sophomore album was recorded over a period of eight months in the basement of a former jazz club in the Friedrichshain area of Berlin, Germany. The lead single “Hands” was released in October 2010 and debuted at number 29 on the UK Singles Chart, marking the duo's fifth top 40 single, and additionally, it topped the U.S. Billboard dance chart. While this seems like a good thing, the group wanted that track to be an “underground, white label-only release” and not promoted on BBC Radio 1.
What does that mean? Basically, they preferred the way the group got its start, not the mainstream direction the label was pushing them towards. They were feeling pressured to recreate their huge success with their first album. But they didn’t want to create the same old thing. What they really wanted to be was the underground, independent musicians again. This led to them scrapping the majority of the material from the Berlin sessions against the wishes of their label. White explained this decision by saying, "We were in Berlin where there is a great electro scene with Sian Hogan, and so we made songs like that, but quickly realised that everything on the radio was Euro-pop shite. We didn't want our record to be tarnished with that brush.”
In an interview with The Guardian, White further elaborated on what led to them deleting the tracks and starting over. When tons of people from the record label flew over to them to hear the tracks, the label people were, according to White, saying, “'Waa! Dance is huge on the radio at the minute! This is gonna fit right in!' " And the duo were feeling overwhelmed by the enthusiasm. “All of a sudden, everyone's there with notepads going: this is fucking huge! And we're like, what do you mean huge? We haven't talked about that.” So instead of being happy, their label is good with the tracks, it made them feel like what they came up with wasn’t any good – too standard. White further described their reasoning, "it might have been an unconscious way of sabotaging things. To make things feel a bit real again." De Martino explained it as, "We can only ever write anything when we're down. Who wants to hear an album from an artist that's happy? Because the content line tends to be: I'm sitting on a beach, how's life for you? And right now a lot of people's answer is likely to be: well not very good actually, we won't buy your record," (Source).
In essence, they didn’t want to just churn something out that’s derivative of their first album, and they stuck to that, with their second album coming out in 2012, with a mix of a few salvaged songs from the Berlin sessions on top of some club stuff they felt good about releasing. The album reached number 24 on the UK Albums Chart.
They next went to Ibiza to work on their third album Super Critical, which was released in October 2014. After touring to promote the third album, they kept a low profile for a while, making festival appearances here and there. Their fourth album The Black Light was eventually announced on social media with a release in 2018.
Things remained quiet from the duo for a while after that before they started teasing new music on social media in 2023. It would take until June 2025 for their latest album Home to be publicly released. Listening to it, you wouldn’t believe it’s the same group. It’s a major pivot from the sound they're best known for in “Shut Up and Let Me Go” having more of a folk sound.
This is in large part because of the inspiration behind this latest album. In an NPR interview, White mentions that she and De Martino are in a relationship and have a child together, Meadow. It’s hard to determine when they decided to become a couple, as White herself says they wanted to keep their relationship separate from the music, but it can be harder to do that sort of thing “when you have literally a mini person. We've been together a long time now," (Source). Their baby was the inspiration for much of the album, both the lyrics and the way they slowed down to write it. “We're just madly in love with our child, locked in with COVID. And that way of writing, which took the pressure off and just took the weight of maybe how people would have expected us to sound,” (Source).
More recently, their song “That’s Not My Name” has been seeing a resurgence on Tik Tok with the rise of a trend, started by Alicia Silverstone, using the chorus to talk about all the characters people call them in lieu of their name because of the iconic characters they’ve played. The trend spread to other users with some even creating funny ones for their pets. You can see a few examples below. This trend helped the younger generation discover the group, so the release of their 2025 album couldn’t have come at a better time.
So, the answer to What Happened to The Ting Tings? is that they didn’t really go anywhere. They just pulled back a little, overwhelmed and unhappy with mainstream success with too much label interference, and decided to go back to what they loved – creating whatever music they wanted. And in a time when so much music sounds the same, it’s nice to see an artist refuse to sell out, even if it means their albums sell less copies.
Written by Kristen Petronio
Thanks to Wikipedia and the following articles for helping me put this blog together.
It’s really interesting to see how The Ting Tings chose artistic integrity over mainstream success. Even if they’re not topping the Monkey Mart charts anymore, it’s inspiring that they’re still making music true to their vision.