Do Wah Doo

Album: My Best Friend Is You (2010)
Charted: 15
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Songfacts®:

  • This is the first single from English singer-songwriter Kate Nash's second album, Crayon Full of Colour.
  • On this song, Nash takes a shot at former friend from her younger days. She explained to Spin magazine: "It's about one of my best friends from when I was younger. He totally betrayed me by hanging out with these enemies of mine - these perfect girls, who wore lip-gloss and talked about boys and were really annoying. He and I had grown up climbing trees, playing in the woods, and going on holiday together, so I thought he'd be cooler than that. But when he turned 15 years old he wanted a girlfriend. I was like, 'Well fine, I'll just pretend I don't give a s--t even though I'll never ever forgive you, even when I'm 22 years old and writing a song about it.'"
  • The song's music video features several of Nash's friends, including photographer Wesley Goode, who also starred in the clip for "Pumpkin Soup." The singer explained: "I wrote the treatment almost a year ago, it's a love story set on a plane in the late '50s, for some reason the idea has always been in my head."
  • This song's sound was inspired by the girl groups of the late-Fifties and early-Sixties such as The Ronettes or The Supremes. "I really got into that sound," explained Nash to Spinner UK. "I'd heard it when my parents played it when I was little, but really started listening to it when I was in Australia on tour in 2008.
    I picked up this box set called One Kiss Can Lead To Another, a collection of rare girl group singles, and I just found the writing amazing. I was on a plane and I heard Stop In The Name of Love by The Supremes, a song I knew inside out, in a totally different light. As a kid it had this amazing dance beat and melody, but then I must have been feeling emotional on the plane - sometimes I get that, must be the altitude - and it just hit me that it's the saddest song ever.
    This woman is begging her partner to stop cheating on her, and she'll forgive him as long he comes back, but she just needs him. It's insane, and I'd never heard it like before. That sort of music was all I was listening to for a while, I only wanted to listen to girl groups - The Ronettes, The Shirelles, The Crystals, The Chiffons, The Flirtations and The Angels and loads of others.
    That time period, late Fifties and early Sixties, was really interesting because a lot of people seemed to be in unhappy relationships, because it wasn't acceptable to get divorced. That situation just makes for the most heartbreaking music, because people pretended and put on a front - which might explain why that music is so 'up', but then the lyrics are so heartbreaking."

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