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Singled Out: TeamMate's Don't Count Me Out

07/03/2014
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Today Scott Simons from the indie pop duo TeamMate tells us about their most recent single "Don't Count Me Out". Here is the story: This song started out on the upright piano in my apartment. I think it was the middle of the day and the little piano figure that starts the song just sorta happened. Next came the groove which was sort of a loose hip hop-y kinda thing with a mix of live drums and big samples. I built a rough track up and scatted verse ideas with placeholder lyrics - mostly na-na's and yeah yeah's etc. - and sent the idea to Dani who emailed back immediately saying she loved the idea but it didn't have a chorus. So, Dani had an idea to do a shout chorus thing and sang an idea back to me on voicemail. I thought of this title I'd had kickin' around but never found a song for "Don't Count Me Out". So I took her idea and made this title fit and sent it back to her.

The first two verses' lyrics came to me fast. I figured the idea would be: we've been through a lot together and individually and we're still here. We're still standing. For example, "I've taken all that I can take and gotten back up for the standing 8" used the boxing metaphor of someone getting back up from a knockdown and receiving the required standing 8 second count from the referee before they can continue again. (I don't really even like boxing, but I loved Mike Tyson's Punch Out.)

The third verse took many tries. I tried different ideas out at different live shows until coming up with the idea to flip the meaning of the title a bit. In the third verse, I'm telling someone else, I know you've been through similar sh*t and maybe everyone "ran for the windows and the fire escapes" but don't count me out... I'm here for you.

Dani and I went back and forth over the bridge which is usually the case in most songs. Dani is brutal on bridges. Her basic rule is "If a bridge isn't as a good as the one in 'Everybody Wants To Rule The World' then it shouldn't be in there". That's a high bar but we settled on this version after cutting it down from a longer bridge idea. Lyrically, it plays off the title by counting down 5,4,3,2,1...

We were excited about this song and have been opening a lot of our shows with it to get people shouting and singing along early.

Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen for yourself and learn more about the album right here!

TeamMate CDs, DVDs and MP3s

TeamMate T-shirts and Posters

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