Elektra Records Fitz and the Tantrums have returned to the top 10 on Billboard's Alternative Songs chart, and all it took was a clap of their hands. The band's new single, "HandClap," currently sits at number six on the tally, giving the neo-soul band their third top-10 single. When "HandClap" was first released, frontman Michael "Fitz" Fitzpatrick called it a "primal tale of love and lust," but, as he tells ABC Radio, the track has another side.
"There's a moment in the song that speaks to just an innate sense of loneliness sometimes, and you wanna have that connection, you wanna have that love in your life," Fitz explains. "And sometimes that desire just takes you down a dark road late at night, and you have to do a walk of shame in the morning."
Likewise, "HandClap" has two sides musically, as well.
"The verses are very primal, and then it goes to this very fluid, beautiful part that's got a touch of melancholy to it," says Fitz. "And so I wanted to heighten at every chance I could the juxtaposition lyrically, and, even more so, sonically, between those two parts. And that's why the verses of that song are extra raw and have a bit of that harshness to them."
Fitz harnessed that harshness in his vocals, too, which he recorded in a "heat of the moment" kind of way.
"The vocals on there are literally my, like, second scratch vocal take," he says. "They're not the perfect take, but they're the most real take, and that's why I decided to keep that."
In between the juxtapositions of harshness and beauty, of primal and lonely, Fitz also takes a moment to shout out one of his musical icons: the Godfather of Soul himself, James Brown.
"This band has always had, to varying degrees, a '60s soul influence to it. And [Brown] is the Godfather," Fitz tells ABC Radio. "For a musician maybe you don't say a prayer to God, you say a prayer to James Brown, because that's your god."
"HandClap" appears on Fitz and the Tantrums' forthcoming self-titled album, which will be released June 10.
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