Tighten Up; The Black Keys

"Tighten Up" is the first single from The Black Keys album, Brothers, released on May 18, 2010. Dan Auerbach told The Sun how this song came about: "That was the last song we did for the record. We had a couple of days off and so did Brian (Danger Mouse) and since we are friends and like hanging out with each other we thought it would be fun to go into the studio and see if we could come up with a tune. We always have a blast when the three of us get together." "Tighten Up" has been liscensed to appear in the video game FIFA 11, the television program Gossip Girl, and a Subaru commercial. The song has become the most successful Black Keys single in America, being only their second charting song and reaching number 2 on the Alternative Songs chart.

The original music video for the song was a low budget clip starring a puppet dinosaur named Frank who is standing beside a plant. The video shows him dancing and miming the words a little, whilst subtitles go on explaining different facts about the video, the band, and Frank; e.g. "Frank has a profile on eharmony.com..." "He is a puppet, not a real dinosaur." This goes along the same direction of using sort of "obvious" or "simple" ways to say things like the album cover does; e.g. "This is a song by the Black Keys" "It's from an album called Brothers", etc.

The official music video was released on May 18, 2010. It shows Auerbach and his fictional son walking to the park. Auerbach sits next to Carney on a bench while their fictional sons play with toy trucks. Auerbach's son look up on the playground to see a little girl, after which he starts to lip sync to the song. He climbs up on the playground and goes in to kiss her but then he opens his eyes to realize Carney's son has lured her away. After he attempts to kiss her, Auerbach's son begins to fight with Carney's son. After Auerbach and Carney attempt to break the fight up in vain, they see the mother of the girl and begin to fight like their sons. They hit each other using mostly Carney's drumset and after the woman sees them fighting, she walks away. Their sons come to them looking at them disappointedly.*

I wanted love, I needed love
Most of all, most of all
Someone said "True Love" was dead
But I'm bound to fall
Bound to fall for you
Oh what can I do?

Take my badge, but my heart remains
Loving you, baby child
Tighten up on your reigns, you're running wild
Running wild, it's true

Sick for days, so many ways
I'm aching now, I'm aching now
It's times like these, I need relief
Please show me how, oh show me how..
To get right
Yeah it's all the side

When I was young, and moving fast,
Nothing slowed me down, oh slowed me down
Now I let the others pass
I've come around, oh come around
Cause I found

Living just to keep going
Going just to be sane
All the while I know
It's such a shame
I don't need to get steady
I know just what to feel
Telling me to be ready, my dear