Showing posts with label Alex Turner. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Alex Turner. Show all posts

Friday, September 6, 2013

Arctic Monkeys’ AM released

First posted 9/13/2020.

AM

Arctic Monkeys


Released: September 6, 2013


Peak: 6 US, 13 UK, 3 CN, 11 AU


Sales (in millions): 1.4 US, 1.28 UK, 3.02 world (includes US and UK)


Genre: garage rock revival


Tracks: (Click for codes to singles charts.)

  1. Do I Wanna Know? (6/19/13, 70 US, 11 UK, 48 CN, 33 AU, sales: 1 million)
  2. R U Mine? (2/27/12, 23 UK, 94 AU)
  3. One for the Road (12/9/13, --)
  4. Arabella (1/28/14, 70 UK)
  5. I Want It All
  6. No. 1 Party Anthem
  7. Mad Sounds
  8. Fireside
  9. Why’d You Only Call Me When You’re High? (8/11/13, 8 UK, 87 CN, 56 AU)
  10. Snap Out of It (6/9/14, 82 UK)
  11. Knee Socks
  12. I Wanna Be Yours


Total Running Time: 41:42


The Players:

  • Alex Turner (vocals, guitar)
  • Jamie Cook (guitar, vocals)
  • Nick O’Malley (bass, vocals)
  • Matt Helders (drums, vocals)

Rating:

4.065 out of 5.00 (average of 15 ratings)


Quotable: “Absolutely and unarguably the greatest record of their career.” – NME magazine


Awards:

About the Album:

With their fifth album, the Arctic Monkeys broke a record in the UK by becoming the first band on an independent label to debut at the top of the album chart with their first five albums. WK The album also hit #1 in Australia, Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, and Slovenia. WK It was the band’s highest charing album in the U.S. and went platinum.

The Arctic Monkeys “forge ahead into bold new territory…neatly splitting the difference between the band’s two personalities – the devotees of barbred British pop and disciples of curdled heavy rock.” AMG AM finds the band “incorporating unapologetic glam stomps, fuzzy guitars, and a decidedly strong rhythmic undercurrent.” AMG “This is vibrant, moody music that showcases a band growing ever stronger with each risk and dare they take.” AMG NME called it “absolutely and unarguably the greatest record of their career.” WK

Entertainment Weekly’s Ray Rahman said the album mixes “Velvet Underground melodies [with] Black Sabbath riffs…and has fun doing it.” WK Guitarist James Cook said David Bowie’s The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars was one of the influences for the album, saying it was one of the only albums they listened to while recording AM. WK Singer Alex Turner cited a wide variety of influences for the album, including Black Sabbath, Dr. Dre, Outkast, Ike Turner, and Aaliyah. WK

The album was promoted with six singles. R U Mine? came out more than a year before the album and then Do I Wanna Know? was released three months beforehand. It became the fourth Monkeys’ single to sell more than 200,000 copies in the UK. It charted in the US and sold a million copies there, also picking up a Grammy nomination for Best Rock Performance. Third single Why Do You Only Call Me When You’re High? became the band’s second top-ten hit in the UK.

Fireplace percolates while…Knee Socks nearly rivals Franz Ferdinand in disco rock.” AMG Josh Homme of Queen of the Stone Ages worked on the record and said, “it’s not disco [as such], but it’s like a modern, dancefloor sexy record.” WK

Because Turner’s “is preoccupied with love gone wrong, jealousy, and general misanthropy” AMG the album has “an undercurrent of cynicism.” AMG NME said the album is filled with “tales of wasted phone calls, drunken lunges and late-night confessions.” WK However, “due to the Arctic Moneys’ muscular wallop and musical restlessness, it never feels like the band is wallowing in bleakness.” AMG


Notes: On the Polish and Japanese versions of the album, the bonus track “2013” was added. An iTunes version of the album included an EP of five live cuts. The deluxe LP edition included “2013” and “Stop the World I Wanna Get Off with You.”

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Monday, June 6, 2011

Arctic Monkeys' Suck It and See released

First posted 12/5/2011; updated 9/12/2020.

Suck It and See

Arctic Monkeys


Released: June 6, 2011


Peak: 14 US, 11 UK, 12 CN, 4 AU


Sales (in millions): 0.09 US, 0.33 UK, 0.43 world (includes US and UK)


Genre: garage rock revival


Tracks: (Click for codes to singles charts.)

  1. She’s Thunderstorms
  2. Black Treacle (1/23/12, --)
  3. Brick by Brick
  4. The Hellcat Spangled Shalalala (8/15/11, --)
  5. Don’t Sit Down ‘Cause I’ve Moved Your Chair (4/16/11, #12 UK)
  6. Library Pictures
  7. All My Own Stunts
  8. Reckless Serenade
  9. Piledriver Waltz
  10. Love Is a Laserquest
  11. Suck It and See (10/31/11, --)
  12. That’s Where You’re Wrong


Total Running Time: 40:04


The Players:

  • Alex Turner (vocals, guitar)
  • Jamie Cook (guitar, vocals)
  • Nick O’Malley (bass, vocals)
  • Matt Helders (drums, vocals)

Rating:

3.609 out of 5.00 (average of 20 ratings)

About the Album:

In 2006, the Arctic Monkeys arrived as the British answer to America’s garage-rock-revival specialists The Strokes. Thanks to effective Internet marketing, the Monkeys were quickly embraced by the U.K. market and the subsequent album, Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not became the quickest-selling debut in U.K. history. Only five years later, the Monkeys are churning out their fourth album while the Strokes have released only one album since the Arctic Monkeys’ Whatever.

On that debut, “snideness was their calling card, if not the entirety of their post-millenial rebel pose. The breathless rockers that characterized their first two records relied on careening tempos and breakneck direction-changes as sonic points of interest, but the name of the game at the time was [singer Alex] Turner’s lyrical invention. Dense and vivid narratives of working-class rogues and dissolute clubbers slashed their way to the listeners’ imaginations…Those songs were observant, trenchant, unpredictable, and often very funny. But, nonetheless, snide. Snide in the very best sense of the word, but still snide.” RL

“Then came the third Arctic Monkeys album, Humbug, in 2009, and with it a subtle migration out of the established comfort zone. Largely produced by James Ford (also the dial-twiddler for [the band’s sophomore album] Favourite Worst Nightmare and the new record in question), a few tracks were also set down with Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age acting as overseer, and the smoothing down of the band’s notoriously spiky compositions was a not-unexpected result. The dreaded ‘M’ word (maturity) was bandied about in not a small number of Humbug reviews, but it was hardly a set of toe-tappers and sappy ballads about mortgages and adorable children. If anything, the honing (the Homme-ing?) of Turner’s melodic sensibilities threw the quality of his songwriting into sharper relief. His lyrical twists and turns were as compelling as they’d always been, but freed from the frantic dynamics of the youthful Monkeys, they worked better as pop songs than they did as rapid-fire rhythmic dime-store sociology.” RL

Promising a more “vintage style” WK in comparison to the “heavily produced sound of Humbug,” WK the band’s previous album, the Monkeys recorded much of the album “in live takes with producer James Ford in Los Angeles, California, over five weeks in January/February 2011.” WK Singer Alex Turner said “that rather than going into the studio with only rough sketches of songs, and making heavy use of overdubbing, the band focused much of their time on rehearsing together.” WK In a March 19, 2011 interview, drummer Matt Helders said the album would be “a bit more poppy, certainly, than Humbug,” WK the previous album.

“A tracklisting full of snappy one-liner titles like ‘All My Own Stunts’, Love Is a Laserquest, and Don’t Sit Down ‘Cause I’ve Moved Your ChairRL “seems to promise a return to the vigorous sarcasm that launched them to domestic stardom.” RL

That latter track serves as the first single, having been released in a limited three thousand vinyl copies for Record Store Day on April 16, 2011. WK “Don’t Sit Down” is an “unquestionable highlight” RL which is “driven with sinister determination by a grimly-grinning death-march of a lead riff.” RL “It’s bluesy, potent, swaggering, irresistible nonsense, and it’s wonderful stuff. Turner gleefully gives himself over to the jokey darkness, exhorting someone, anyone to ‘run with scissors’, ‘go into business with a grizzly bear’, and ‘bite the lighting / and tell me how it tastes’. It’s quite hard to picture any other writer/vocalist in rock managing to make a reference to the Macarena sound simultaneously hilarious and ominous, but Turner accomplishes it here.” RL

“Don’t Sit Down” may be the first official single, but a video for Brick by Brick preceded it in March. WK The song offers a “numbingly simple Queens of the Stone Age pastiche is so profoundly non-Arctic Monkeys that it’s tough to know what to make of it at all. The nods to their own past are always brief and measured, though; this album was crafted by a band moving inescapably forward.” RL

The “starts off strong, with the beguiling” EG and “deceptively romantic” RL She’s Thunderstorms. The song kicks things off with a “lithe, jangling riff” RL that “is characteristic of a band that has gained more than a measure of concern for how they sound, a feature further supported by the surfeit of harmonizing here and elsewhere.” RL

That song “and the snappier Black Treacle [are] both fine showcases for Alex Turner’s low-throated, drily stylish vocals. There’s some filler after that, but the taut atmospherics and sly drama keep you interested.” EG

“The surprisingly anthemic title track shares the album opener’s musical elements as well as its lovesick tone, but neither song is doe-eyed or naïve about romance. Turner comes across as a weary soul who yearns for a relationship of interconnection but is under no illusions about the minefield that must be crossed to approach it.” RL

“The track Piledriver Waltz was first released on Alex Turner’s debut EP, Submarine, where it was credited to Turner as a solo artist.” WK The version on Suck It and See is “a rerecording with the whole band involved.” WK

Other cuts “allow some nostalgic Monkeys glory to be recaptured. Library Voices is of debut vintage, and All My Own Stunts features a callback to the title phrase of ‘Dancing Shoes’ from Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not.” RL

“Ponderous sobriety will never be the way of the Arctic Monkeys, and their prodigious cheekiness has hardly been tempered much on Suck It and See. But Alex Turner and his bandmates are clearly expanding their abilities and getting better at focusing their fire with every release. The result may purposely evade the sublime, but it transcends the snide as well. Perhaps the album title is not so much a crude tease as it is a nervy invitation.” RL

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Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Arctic Monkeys released Humbug

First posted 6/8/2011; updated 9/12/2020.

Humbug

Arctic Monkeys


Released: August 19, 2009


Peak: 15 US, 12 UK, 6 CN, 2 AU


Sales (in millions): -- US, -- UK, 0.52 world (includes US and UK)


Genre: garage rock revival


Tracks: (Click for codes to singles charts.)

  1. My Propeller (3/22/10, --)
  2. Crying Lightning (6/29/09, 12 UK)
  3. Dangerous Animals
  4. Secret Door
  5. Potion Approaching
  6. Fire and the Thud
  7. Cornerstone (11/16/09, --)
  8. Dance Little Liar
  9. Pretty Visitors
  10. The Jeweller’s Hands


Total Running Time: 39:15


The Players:

  • Alex Turner (vocals, guitar)
  • Jamie Cook (guitar, vocals)
  • Nick O’Malley (bass, vocals)
  • Matt Helders (drums, vocals)

Rating:

3.458 out of 5.00 (average of 6 ratings)


Quotable:Humbug makes two things clear: Arctic Monkeys are serious about being in a band, about making music, and they are the first major British band in generations unencumbered by fear or spite for America.” – Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide

About the Album:

After becoming wildly successful in the U.K. with their 2006 debut album Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, the Arctic Monkeys quickly released a follow-up with 2007’s Favourite Worst Nightmare. Showing no signs of slowing down the band had already started working on songs for album #3 “towards the end of summer 2008, and finished it entirely on spring 2009.” WK

The resulting album, 2009’s Humbug, was recorded entirely in the United States. As on their previous album, and Turner’s side project, the Last Shadow Puppets’ The Age of the Understatement, the band tapped James Ford as a producer. WK However, they also enlisted Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme. “On first glance, it’s a peculiar pair – the heirs of Paul Weller meet the heavy desert mystic – but this isn’t a team of equals, it’s a big brother helping his little siblings go wayward and get weird.” AMG Homme, “renowned for his collaborations but heretofore untested as a producer” AMG “doesn’t imprint his own views on the Monkeys but encourages them to follow their strange instincts, whether it’s a Nick Cave obsession or the inclination to emphasize atmosphere over energy.” AMG

Cave is only one of the influences Turner and the band’s drummer Matt Helders have cited as influences on the album. They also turned to Jimi Hendrix, Cream, Jake Thackray, John Cale, and Roky Erickson. WK

The result is an album that is “not always immediately accessible or pleasurable to an outside listener” AMG but “the Monkeys still favor angular riffs and clenched rhythms, constructing tightly framed vignettes not widescreen epics.” AMG “They’re working with a darker palette and creating vaguely abstract compositions, sensibilities that extend to Alex Turner’s words too, as he trades keen detail for vivid scrawled impressions. Every element of the album reflects a band testing its limits, seeing where they could – not necessarily will – go next.” AMGHumbug makes two things clear: Arctic Monkeys are serious about being in a band, about making music, and they are the first major British band in generations unencumbered by fear or spite for America.” AMG

Many critics praised “the band’s newfound maturity;” WK Billboard magazine said that the band justifies “the hype by shifting its best qualities into different, equally dazzling shapes” WK while The Record Review said that with Humbug the band “surpasses most of its colleagues in terms of songwriting and performance ability.” WK While Pitchfork’s Joe Tangari noted that the album “isn’t better than either of its predecessors, but it expands the group’s range… and…demonstrates a great deal of staying power for a band that could have imploded before it ever got this far.” WK

“While overall response was positive, the album was criticized by some for not containing the same hooks” WK as previous efforts. In particular, Spin called the album “accomplished, but not particularly infectious.” WK

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Monday, April 23, 2007

Arctic Monkeys released sophomore album, Favourite Worst Nightmare

Favourite Worst Nightmare

Arctic Monkeys


Released: April 23, 2007


Peak: 7 US, 13 UK, 4 CN, 2 AU


Sales (in millions): 0.36 US, 1.0 UK, 1.61 world (includes US and UK)


Genre: garage rock revival


Tracks: (Click for codes to singles charts.)

  1. Brianstorm (4/16/07, 2 UK)
  2. Teddy Picker (12/07, 20 UK)
  3. D Is for Dangerous
  4. Balaclava
  5. Fluorescent Adolescent (7/07, 5 UK)
  6. Only One Who Knows
  7. Do Me a Favour
  8. This House Is a Circus
  9. If You Were There, Beware
  10. The Bad Thing
  11. Old Yellow Bricks
  12. 505


Total Running Time: 37:18


The Players:

  • Alex Turner (vocals, guitar)
  • Jamie Cook (guitar, vocals)
  • Nick O’Malley (bass, vocals)
  • Matt Helders (drums, vocals)

Rating:

4.022 out of 5.00 (average of 24 ratings)


Awards: (Click on award to learn more).

About the Album:

“Breathless praise is a time-honored tradition in British pop music, but even so, the whole brouhaha surrounding the 2006 debut of the Arctic Monkeys bordered on the absurd. It wasn’t enough for the Arctic Monkeys to be the best new band of 2006; they had to be the saviors of rock & roll. Lead singer/songwriter Alex Turner had to be the best songwriter since Noel Gallagher or perhaps even Paul Weller, and their debut, Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, at first was hailed as one of the most important albums of the decade, and then, just months after its release, NME called it one of the Top Five British albums ever.” AMG

Instead of basking in the abundance of praise, the Monkeys went right back to work. Favourite Worst Nightmare came out just a little over a year after their debut and the result is “the vibrant, thrilling sound of a band coming into its own.” AMG The album “hardly abandons the pleasures of their debut but instead frantically expands upon them.” AMG “This isn’t a quartet that bashes out simply three-chord rock & roll.” AMG “They’ll play art punk riffs without pretension.” AMG

“Born in the ‘80s and raised on the Strokes and the Libertines, they treat all rock as a level playing field, loving its traditions but not seeing musical barriers between generations.” AMG They absorb their influences and “spit it all out in a giddy, cacophonous blend of post-punk and classic rock that sounds fresh.” AMG They “haven’t stumbled on their second album” like those bands did by overthinking it. AMG

In fact, Nightmare has been described as a “faster, meaner” WK “more ambitious, heavier” WK album. They “sound like they’ll try anything, which makes this a rougher album in some ways than their debut, which indeed was more cohesive. All the songs on Whatever shared a similar viewpoint, whereas the excitement here is that there’s a multitude of viewpoints.” AMG “It reveals the depth and ambition of the band.” AMG

“The Monkeys may start with an infectious riff, but then they’ll violently burst into jagged yet tightly controlled blasts of post-punk squalls or they’ll dress a verse with circular harmonies as they do at the end of Fluorescent Adolescent.” AMG “Their signature is precision, evident in their concise songs, deftly executed instrumental interplay.” AMG

There’s also “Turner’s wry wordplay, which is clever but never condescending.” AMG Even the title of the album’s lead single is a play on words. Often mistakenly assumed to be titled “Brainstorm,” the song is actually called Brianstorm, a reference to the song’s protagonist named Brian. The song hit #2 on the UK charts, paving the way for the album to have another big debut like its predecessor. It debuted at #1 on the UK album chart, eventually selling a million copies.

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First posted 6/8/2011; updated 3/13/2022.

Sunday, January 29, 2006

The Arctic Monkeys' debut hits #1 in the UK

Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not

Arctic Monkeys


Released: January 23, 2006


Peak: 24 US, 14 UK, 16 CN, 11 AU


Sales (in millions): 0.33 US, 1.38 UK, 2.71 world (includes US and UK)


Genre: garage rock revival


Tracks: (Click for codes to singles charts.)

  1. The View from the Afternoon (4/24/06, --)
  2. I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor (10/17/05, #1 UK, #7 MR)
  3. Fake Tales of San Francisco (5/30/05, --)
  4. Dancing Shoes
  5. You Probably Couldn’t See for the Lights But You Were Staring Right at Me
  6. Still Take You Home
  7. Riot Van
  8. Red Light Indicates Doors Are Secured
  9. Mardy Bum
  10. Perhaps Vampies Is a Bit Strong But…
  11. When the Sun Goes Down (1/16/06, #1 UK)
  12. From the Ritz to the Rubble
  13. A Certain Romance


Total Running Time: 40:56


The Players:

  • Alex Turner (vocals, guitar)
  • Jamie Cook (guitar, vocals)
  • Andy Nicholson (bass, vocals)
  • Matt Helders (drums, vocals)

Rating:

4.112 out of 5.00 (average of 26 ratings)


Quotable: The fastest selling debut in British history.


Awards: (Click on award to learn more).

About the Album:

On the strength of MP3s of early demos posted on the web, the Arctic Monkeys went from “Internet phenomenon to the biggest band in the U.K.” AMG They became “the UK underground’s most proselytizing young preachers of the DIY gospel.” AZ When Whatever People Say I Am hit the streets, it sold 363,735 copies in its first week, selling more than the rest of the Top 20 combined and making it the fastest selling debut in British history. WK

“Last time such excitement surrounded a new British guitar band it was a decade earlier, as Britpop hit overdrive with the release of Oasis’ 1994 debut, Definitely Maybe. All four members of the Arctic Monkeys were a little bit shy of their tenth birthday at the time, a bit young to be sure, but old enough to have Oasis be their first favorite band. So, it’s little surprise that the Gallaghers’ laddism – celebrating nights out fueled by lager and loud guitars – is the bedrock foundation of the Arctic Monkeys, just the way as it has been for most British rock bands since the mid-‘90s.” AMG

The band delivered a “poetic punch-up of visceral rock ‘n’ roll” FO by “marrying nervy, caffeine-and-cigarettes indie clatter to conversational, pretense-free lyrics and the occasional burst of off-the-cuff eloquence.” AZ “With an atom-splitting opening riff and an agile beast blitzkrieg behind the drums” FO the Arctic Monkeys “made sense of the working-class adolescence that lay ahead of many fans.” FO The album “captures the energy of youth culture in such a way that it rattled anyone of age like a pinball in an earthquake.” FO Some consider Whatever to be “a concept album concerning the lives of young Northern England clubbers.” WK

Indeed, songs like first single I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor, Still Take You Home, and You Probably Couldn’t See the Lights But You Were Staring Straight at Me “all examine human behaviour in nightclubs.” WKFrom the Ritz to the Rubble is an account of nightclub bouncers, while When the Sun Goes Down was inspired by prostitutes…in the Neepsend district of Sheffield.” WK

“Look beyond the Arctics’ bristly, laddish exterior, however, because it’s actually affairs of the heart that comprise this album’s secret core: see the sweaty-palmed Dancing Shoes, bearing testament to the trial of nerves that is pulling in a suburban indie nightclub, or Mardy Bum – a tribute to a moody girlfriend that, for all its witty barbs (‘I’ve seen your frown and it’s like looking down the barrel of a gun’), is tinted with sweet affection.” LP

Also, “the Monkeys’ true musical ground zero is 2001, the year the Strokes stormed British consciousness with their debut, Is This It. The Arctic Monkeys borrow heavily from the Strokes’ stylized ennui, adding an equal element of the Libertines’ shambolic neo-classicist punk, undercut by a hint of dance-punk learned from Franz Ferdinand.” AMG

“The opening The View from the Afternoon predicts a ruckus with a whole lot more grit than the Kaisers can muster, while on the mellow Riot Van, a tale of underage drinking and cop-baiting culminates in a messy beating in the back of a station wagon.” LP

Whatever captures the band “jamming in too many angular riffs into too short of a space, tearing through the songs as quickly as possible. But where the Strokes camouflaged their songwriting skills with a laconic, take-it-or-leave-it sexiness and where the Libertines mythologized England with a junkie poeticism, the Arctic Monkeys at their heart are simple, everyday lads, lacking any sense of sex appeal or romanticism, or even the desire for either.” AMG “Lead singer/songwriter Alex Turner tells stories from their lives – mainly hookups on the dancefloor and underage drinking, balanced by the occasional imagined tragic tales of prostitution and the music industry.” AMG

However, “the band doesn't soar with youthful abandon, it merely raises a bit of noise in the background.” AMG Whatever sports a “dry production, sounding for all the world like an homage to Is This It – all clanking guitars and clattering drums, with most of the energy coming from the group’s sloppy call-and-response backing vocals.” AMG

The recycling of not-so-old sounds and styles can leave the Monkeys’ debut “surprisingly predictable” AMG but “the one thing that sets them apart, and does give them promise, is Alex Turner’s writerly ambitions.” AMG “While his words can be overcooked – allusions to Romeo & Juliet do not necessarily count as depth – he does tell stories, which does distinguish him from his first-person peers. But it's a double-edged sword, his gift: the very thing that sets him apart – his fondness for detail, his sense of place – may be the quality that makes his work resonate for thousands of young Britons, but they also tie him completely to a particular time and place that makes it harder to relate to for listeners who aren’t in his demographic or country (and perhaps time).” AMG

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First posted 1/29/2012; last updated 4/28/2022.

Saturday, October 29, 2005

Arctic Monkeys “I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor” hit #1 in the UK

I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor

Arctic Monkeys

Writer(s): Alex Turner (see lyrics here)


Released: October 17, 2005


First Charted: October 9, 2005


Peak: 7 AR, 12 UK, 18 AU, 6 DF (Click for codes to charts.)


Sales (in millions): 0.4 US, 1.8 UK


Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 146.0 video, 539.69 streaming

Awards:

Click on award for more details.

About the Song:

The early 2000s saw a garage revival led by American groups the Strokes and the White Stripes. Eager to have their own entry in the genre, the UK went all in on embracing the Sheffield-based Arctic Monkeys in 2005. Just a few years earlier, members Alex Turner and Jamie Cook got guitars for Christmas and, with help from bassist Andy Nicholson and drummer Matt Helders, started playing songs by the White Stripes and the Vines.

They were “well on the way to joining their idols in the big leagues, thanks largely to the promise shown in a set of demos the band made available for free on the internet.” TB Thanks to that and their reputation for live performances, they’d built a strong fan base before ever releasing a record. It set the group up to be “the most talked about British band in years” TB when “I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor” debuted at #1 on the UK charts. Alison Howe, a talent booker, said it “felt like a moment that a generation would remember for the rest of their lives.” WK

The Monkeys recorded the song with producer Alan Smyth first before trying again with James Ford and Rich Costey. They finally landed on a winning version with producer Jim Abbiss. WK The song features “jagged guitar chords and Turner’s stream-of-consciousness-style vocal about ‘dancing to electro-pop like a robot from 1984.’” TB British music magazine NME said it was “the perfect encapsulation of what it is to be young, pissed, lusty, angry, and skint in modern day Britain.” WK

Stylistically, “Dancefloor” is somewhere “between the early-21st-century vogue for scratchy new wave and the confident swagger of 1990s favorites Oasis.” TB Music writer Tom Ewing even said the rise of the band “gave the impression that a return to the Britpop boom was upon us.” WK

Their debut album, Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, became the fastest-selling debut of all time in the UK. when it sold more than 365,000 copies in its first week. SF


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First posted 9/28/2023.