Today Frank Mitaritonna from pop-rockers The Given Motion tells us about their song “Don’t Blink” from their new album “Human Dictionary”. Here is the story:
It was our favorite accident and we haven’t done a show without it. People always tell us it’s their favorite if they don’t know us and it kills us because we try so hard with every song we write. This one was a fluke we can’t seem to get past.
The whole tune is based around the combination of a drum rhythm CJ clapped in my living room and a guitar riff that I was messing with. I’m sure I had a totally different idea for what it should’ve been played against. As soon as he did it though, I knew we had something. The guitar was bouncy and together it formed this really engaging beat which you really hear in full at the very end of the song.
We got together as a band and like all our best tunes it came together in no time. Our recording habits then were fairly undisciplined and in summer 2008 we decided to add it to 2 other songs we were doing for a 6 song EP. We had no idea what the chorus would be, but CJ came in pretty open minded. Ryan and I had an idea how we wanted it to be and true to form, what he wound up singing was the total opposite. His original vocal idea for each chorus was what you hear him belting out over the last chorus. We needed something a little more restrained for the rest of the song and so, totally on the spot in the control room he jotted out some lyrics and I kinda hummed something basic and he went in and laid it down. When it came time for “Human Dictionary” we wanted to do the song again, right.
This song was really inspired by some advice by the father of his friend, about not missing out on life, he said “Don’t Blink”. We could’ve named the song “There Was a Time” or something like that, but this felt right to us. I think people can’t help getting into this song and admittedly, neither can we. It’s always been with us and we’ve done it so many ways, including beat-boxing it. It was a song we wrote on the cusp of breakup and it gave us the confidence we needed to know we could move on writing music together.
Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, grab a free download right here!