Like many Black Keys songs, there's no specific meaning to "Tighten Up," though it's loosely based around a cheating female lover. Lead singer Dan Auerbach said: "I took a couple of verses out of a book of lyrics and worked round them. I worked like that a lot like then. Sometimes I write songs and it's about the words: other times it's about the vowel sound. If I try to put a smarter word in, it doesn't sound better. They're all kinda spontaneous. I have no idea what the song's about."
"Tighten Up" was a breakthrough single for the Black Keys, who had been releasing music since 2002. It topped the Billboard Alternative Songs chart and was their first song to land on the Hot 100.
In Mojo, Patrick Carney called his drumbeat on this track "my sh--ty version of Can's 'Vitamin C' beat," referring to the 1972 song "Vitamin C" by the German band Can. He then explained how the song came together: "Dan came up with the riff and we both had the idea of a whistling hook. 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. And then it did. It got played on the radio a lot."
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