The Ting Tings formed in 2007 as the duo of Katie White and Jules De Martino. Before that, they formed the Portishead-esque trio Dear Eskiimo with friend Simon Templeman. They were signed to Mercury Records, but the label’s management style and constant restructuring led to the group splitting before anything even got off the ground.
“They had committed to an album, but then suddenly changed all their top people, and we got dumped,” De Martino told The Guardian in September 2025. “I remember thinking: ‘Bastards.’ No one would answer the phone to us. We felt invisible and rejected.”
This rejection, while devastating at the time, eventually led to The Ting Tings’ runaway success in the late 2000s pop scene. They released the single “That’s Not My Name” as a double A-side with “Great DJ”, but the former really took off.
“That’s what the lyrics to ‘That’s Not My Name’ are all about,” De Martino added. “‘They call me Stacey / They call me Her / They call me Jane / That’s not my name.’”
How The Ting Tings Became Rising Stars After Becoming Disillusioned with Major Record Labels
Katie White and Jules De Martino were living at Islington Mill Studios in Salford, Manchester, at the time they were forming The Ting Tings. The Mill was a creative, communal living space with many other artists and musicians, who influenced them as they formed their duo. There were also live shows at The Mill, which became a hub for the Manchester party scene. Record label execs and producers would often attend the shows, and tickets were a hot commodity.
Early on, The Ting Tings had a DIY art-punk approach. They only had three songs—”That’s Not My Name”, “Great DJ”, and “Shut Up and Let Me Go”—but they were ambitious.
The double A-side came out on Switchflicker Records, an independent label started by a young woman who also lived at The Mill. It cost £2,000 ($2,695) to press 500 vinyl copies.
“She helped us get it into the Piccadilly Records shop in Manchester by putting it on the shelf illegally,” said De Martino. Word of their shows at The Mill spread, and the crowds kept growing. By the time they released another single, “Fruit Machine”, they were being played on BBC Radio 6.
“It Went Into the Stratosphere … It’s An Evergreen Song”
“It’s constantly used all around the world,” Katie White said of “That’s Not My Name” and its lasting legacy. “It was in a big Starbucks commercial. It’s been featured in lots of films. It went viral on TikTok three years ago.”
She continued, “We get asked to write for other artists because they want us to write that sort of song. It’s definitely given us the ability to continue making the music we want.”
At the time, “That’s Not My Name” was so popular that critics, radio DJs, and anyone else in the industry had a hard time categorizing it. “It didn’t really sit in the indie nu-wave/nu-rave scene at the time,” White explained. “NME grabbed hold of us for a while, but then they didn’t know what to do with us because two-year-olds and grandmas were singing along to ‘That’s Not My Name’ as well.
“It went into the stratosphere, but has stayed in its own lane,” she added. “It’s an evergreen song, like ‘My Sharona’. You can’t really tell what decade it’s from.”
Meanwhile, White also revealed to The Guardian that she and De Martino were always a couple from the beginning. They felt that talking about it would distract from their music. However, she did add that their daughter was almost five at the time. Makes you wonder what her name is, perhaps.
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The post How a String of Rejections Led to This 2007 Pop One-Hit Wonder (That Will Be Stuck in Your Head for the Rest of the Day) appeared first on VICE.
