Over And Over

Album: The Warning (2006)
Charted: 27
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Songfacts®:

  • This was the breakthrough single for Hot Chip. It was released in the UK for the first time on February 27, 2006 peaking at #32 on the singles chart. The song was re-released in the UK on October 9, 2006, this time reaching #27.
  • Hot Chip's Alexis Taylor told Mojo magazine September 2012 that the song was written, "when I was interested in hypnotic, repetitive music like Terry Riley's 'A Rainbow in Curved Air.' If you get a good loop going, you could listen to it forever. You hear something different every repeat."
  • The single was named as their #1 Track of 2006 by the staff of NME. In response, Taylor admitted to the UK magazine that he was really pleased Hot Chip's labours had been recognised. "I'm really proud, it's a very nice thing to happen after a year of working on this record, promoting it and playing it," he said. "The single seemed to have a strange life of its own where people kept returning to it, playing it in clubs and around the world even!"
  • Joint Hot Chip lead singer Joe Goddard and their drum programmer Felix Martin wrote the music for "Over and Over." At the time, Goddard explained to The Guardian, he and Martin lived in an old converted church in Camden. He started the song "trying to copy the bassline from 'Dance' by ESG." Martin added to it, and then Alexis Taylor penned the lyrics "referring to how Felix and I kept playing this bass groove over and over."
  • Like a monkey with a miniature cymbal
    The joy or repetition really is in you


    Alexis Taylor improvised the lyrics for "Over and Over" while Joe Goddard played the percussion loop and Felix Martin played the distorted bass line. "We were jamming and my words were a response to the groove," Taylor explained to The Guardian. "'Joy In Repetition' is a Prince song so I borrowed the phrase. I'm singing about the 'joy in repetition' I could sense Joe was feeling in making minimal, repetitive dance music – which was fairly new to us – and I was saying, 'I'm really with you when that joy is in you.'"

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