Hamilton Leithauser Shares “Don’t Check The Score” (Listen Up)

In the beginning of February, Hamilton Leithauser began releasing songs off his upcoming album, The Loves Of Your Life. So far, we’ve heard Here They Come, Isabella and yesterday he released the latest single Don’t Check The Score.

Along with the track which you can listen to below, Leithauser shared a bemusing memory about the song’s inspiration and title:

Hi – Today I am releasing my new song “Don’t Check the Score.” It’s about rooting for an old estranged friend. Maybe it was a rocky road and weird goodbye, but you’d like them to know you’re still in their corner.

When I used to work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, my friend introduced me to “day trading” which is just compulsive gambling on the stock market. It can be done from your home (or work) computer. Instead of working, we would gamble all day. It was incredibly fun when you were up, and not as fun when you were down. This was around 2001, so we only had a dial up connection on one shared computer. It took like 45 seconds to login to the website to check your bet (hopefully you’d made like $55 or something). When things looked sour, you’d say “don’t login!” Out of sight, out of mind — sort of. In reality you’d just be biting your nails thinking of nothing else… definitely not working. Anyhow, the title is a metaphor for looking the other way, or avoiding an inconvenient truth. I guess I could have called it “Don’t Login” but I think there’s a lot more nobility in a sports metaphor than a day trading metaphor. Eventually, I stopped trading, because the house always wins.

So today this song goes out to all the gamblers, betters, troubled souls, long-lost friends, and sad-sack day-traders who can’t face logging in.

Right now, don’t login.