"Tighten Up" (The Black Keys)

I’ve had conversations with people (okay, near fistfights) over whether or not The Black Keys sold out on their album Brothers (2010).  I’ve even had some argue that the duo's initial collaboration with producer Brian “Danger Mouse” Burton on the album Attack & Release (2008) was the beginning of the end of their homegrown sound.
I completely disagree.  There’s a difference between selling out and refining a good thing.  I will admit, their more recent releases have had a garage rock via Memphis kind of feel, whereas their earlier albums had a garage rock via Detroit feel.  But that’s Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney’s prerogative to take their sound in new directions.  The original fire and crunch are still there, even if the sound is a little more polished.
For my money, Brothers was the best album released in 2010—rocking and soulful with exceptional songwriting from start to finish.  It’s an album that will hold up for many years to come.
The same can be said for the track “Tighten Up,” the first single released from Brothers.  It happened to be their only collaboration with Burton on the album, and it actually came at the very end of sessions.
The bulk of Brothers was cut with producer Mark Neill at the famed Muscle Shoals Sound Studios in Muscle Shoals, AL, where artists from The Staples Singers to The Rolling Stones recorded hit records in the 70s.  Thing was, when Auerbach and Carney made the decision to record at Muscle Shoals, they weren't really aware that it hadn't been a functioning recording studio in more than 30 years; it was basically a shabby museum, sitting on the side of a highway in rural Alabama.  So Neill shipped recording equipment from his own California studio to Muscle Shoals, allowing the duo to record in the fabled studio, albeit on outside machinery.
As Neill states in an August 2011 Sound on Sound article, "Recording The Black Keys at Muscle Shoals," the natural acoustics of the studio immediately affected the way Auerbach and Carney approached writing and recording the material for Brothers.  Notes Neill, the cinderblock construction of the building and springy floors in the studio act as a sponge for bass.  So Auerbach and Carney were sort of driven to focus on drums and bass first--an approach they'd never taken before.  Likewise, Neill states that the sound in the studio's control room tends to swallow bass, too.  Therefore, his tendency was to compensate by pushing up the bass and kick drum when mixing.  
Upon playback, he was shocked at the bass-heavy sound that they were getting.
“First few takes, we literally couldn't believe what we were hearing,” says Neill. “Dan and Pat were kind of looking at each other saying, 'That doesn't even sound like us.' Seriously.”
After recording had wrapped in Alabama, Auerbach and Carney spent their downtime hanging out with Burton in New York and decided to cut one more track with him at Brooklyn's Bunker Studio.  With the Muscle Shoals sound still fresh on their minds, the track began with Carney playing around with a rhythm pattern that was inspired by the 1972 song "Vitamin C" by German experimental/psychedelic rock band Can.  Auerbach came up with the core riff and lyric, and they both decided the song needed that "Sittin' On the Dock of the Bay"-style whistle in the intro as the icing on the cake.
Although the song is their biggest hit to date, Carney states in the 2011 Mojo article "Exiles on Main Street" they figured the song was a throwaway.  "We made the song, didn't think anything of it, shelved the thing for a month and a half.  That was 'Tighten Up.'  We never thought it would get played on the radio." 
I can't express my admiration of this song enough.  It is equal parts past and present, a simultaneous throwback and a leap forward that combines Stax soul and modern, club-ready blues-rock.  I completely love Auerbach's vocal and the genius shift in tempo during the last minute of the song, which gives you just enough time to catch your breath before hitting "repeat."