Arctic Monkeys
England | Indie Rock / Garage Rock Revival | 2002 - present
Arctic Monkeys are an English indie rock band from High Green, a suburb of Sheffield. Formed in 2002, the band currently consists of Alex Turner on lead vocals and guitar, Jamie Cook on guitar, Matt Helders on drums and backing vocals and Nick O'Malley on bass guitar, a position formerly held by Andy Nicholson.
Arctic Monkeys achieved chart success with their first single, "I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor", which reached number one in the UK Singles Chart. Their debut album Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not, released on 23 January 2006, was at the time the fastest-selling debut album in British music history, beating Oasis' Definitely Maybe. It remains the fastest-selling debut album for a group. It received critical acclaim, winning both the 2006 Mercury Prize and the 2007 Brit Award for Best British Album. The band's second album, Favourite Worst Nightmare, was released on 23 April 2007, sold over 225,000 copies in its debut week, and was nominated for the 2007 Mercury Prize. The group also picked up the award for Best British Album and Best British Group at the Brit awards in 2008.
Arctic Monkeys achieved their success through fan-made demo tapes and online file sharing. They were heralded as one of the first acts to come to the public attention via the Internet, with commentators suggesting they represented the possibility of a change in the way in which new bands are promoted and marketed. The band eventually signed to the independent record label Domino Records.
History
In 2001, neighbours Alex Turner and Jamie Cook asked for instruments as Christmas presents and both received guitars.[6] After teaching themselves to play, the pair formed a band with Turner's schoolmates Andy Nicholson and Matt Helders. Nicholson already played bass, so Helders ended up on drums — "that was all that were left...they all had guitars so I bought a drum kit after a bit." An article in Blender magazine in May 2006 suggested that Alex Turner was not the original vocalist of the band - "When their first vocalist, Glyn Jones, left after a few months, Turner cautiously stepped up to the microphone." This was soon followed by a more detailed article in UK tabloid The Sun, who reported that in the very early days of the band - before they had played a gig - Glyn Jones, another attendee of Stocksbridge High School, used to be the band's singer. Jones said that he and Turner "were bored [after our GCSE exams] so we started writing a song about a geek in our year...". Glyn says that he was lead singer only because "Alex was really humble and didn’t realise how great his own voice was... he was happy just playing his guitar." However, Glyn says that he "did not have the dedication to take it any further... to me we were just a gang of kids messing around because we were bored." Although reports suggested they named themselves after Helders' uncle's (or even father's) band, Helders later admitted that these reports were false, claiming "we made that up ‘cause we got so many people asking us that in the UK, so we just started making stories up", and that he just didn't have the heart to tell the original reporter he'd been lying.
They began rehearsing at Yellow Arch Studios in Neepsend, and their first gig came on 13 June 2003 at The Grapes in Sheffield city-centre. After a few performances, they began to record demos and burn them onto CDs to give away at gigs. With a limited number of CDs available, fans began to rip the music back onto their computers and share it amongst themselves. The group did not mind, saying "we never made those demos to make money or anything. We were giving them away free anyway — that was a better way for people to hear them. And it made the gigs better, because people knew the words and came and sang along." They themselves took no responsibility for their music, admitting that they did not even know how to get their songs onto the Internet. When asked about the popularity of the band's MySpace site in an interview with Prefix Magazine, the band pointed out that they did not even know what MySpace was, and that the site had originally been created by their fans. "[When we went number one in England] we were on the news and radio about how MySpace has helped us. But that's just the perfect example of someone who doesn’t know what the fuck they’re talking about. We actually had no idea what it was."
They began to grow in popularity across the north of England, receiving attention from BBC Radio and the British tabloid press. Mark "The Sheriff" Bull, a local amateur photographer, filmed the band's performances and made the music video to "Fake Tales of San Francisco", releasing it on his web-site, alongside the contents of Beneath the Boardwalk — a collection of the band's songs which he named after a local music venue. In May 2005, Arctic Monkeys released their first EP, Five Minutes with Arctic Monkeys, featuring the songs "Fake Tales of San Francisco" and "From the Ritz to the Rubble". This release was limited to 500 CDs and 1000 7" records, but was also available to download from the iTunes Music Store. Soon after, the band played at the Carling Stage of the Reading and Leeds Festivals, reserved for less known or unsigned bands. Their appearance was hyped by much of the music press and the band was received by an unusually large crowd for the billing they played. The critically acclaimed performance included spontaneous singalongs of tracks that were only available as demos on the Internet.
Lyrics
The lyrics of Arctic Monkeys' singles often feature social realism as typified by "A Certain Romance", which comments on chav and indie culture; and observations of working class life, as typified by "When the Sun Goes Down", described as a "witty, poignant song about prostitution in the Neepsend district of Sheffield",[49]. Based on their lyrical style, Arctic Monkeys have been compared to acts such as the British rapper Mike Skinner of The Streets[50] and earlier artists such as Morrissey and Jarvis Cocker, both known for their combination of observational lyrics and humour.
The lead singer, Alex Turner sings in a strong Yorkshire accent, typified by the contraction of "something" to "summat" (IPA: /sum?t/) (as summit or like summut), use of "dun't" (IPA: /d?nt/) (like dunt) instead of don't for "doesn't", use of "were" instead of "was", the replacement of "anything" and "nothing" with "owt" (IPA: /a?t/) (as nout) and "nowt" (IPA: /na?t/) (like nout), and the use of Yorkshire colloquialisms such as "mardy" for "grumpy, difficult, unpredictable, spoiled". Their songs also include frequent references to popular culture both common and obscure; Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not includes references to Romeo and Juliet (the Shakespeare play is also referenced in the track "Only Ones Who Know" from the Favourite Worst Nightmare album, and in "I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor" were Turner makes reference to "Montagues and Capulets], Roxanne by The Police and Frank Spencer, from Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em, leading one journalist to describe the band as having a "camp retro-futurist fascination" for 1980s popular culture.