STACK #219 January 2023

MUSIC FEATURE

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ARCTIC MONKEYS WHATEVER PEOPLE SAY I AM, THAT’S WHAT I’M NOT Scruffy scallywags take world by storm: few bands have done it as well as Arctic Monkeys did in 2006, so we’re investigating the story of the four-piece’s debut. Words Bryget Chrisfield

Year 2006

This Mercury Prize-winning record by Arctic Monkeys is basically a collection of first-person, observational narratives about the trials and tribulations of millennial UK club kids on the pull – oh, to be young, British, and directionless! Before they’d even released a proper single, this Sheffield quartet managed to sell out London’s Astoria, and were already hailed as “the UK’s biggest new band since Oasis” prior to releasing their debut album. Due to “high demand”, the release date for Whatever People Say I Am, That’sWhat I’m Not – which would become the best-selling debut album in British history (overtaken in 2007 by Leona Lewis, and again in 2009 by Susan Boyle) – was brought forward. The band had already released two chart-topping singles – I BetYou Look Good on the Dancefloor (which they performed at the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics) and When the Sun Goes Down – before this record dropped as well.

Arctic Monkeys in 2006. Credit: Dean Chalkley

Summat to be proud of Frontman Alex Turner’s broad accent

summat’,” he recalled during an interview (of course he did). The View from the Afternoon, Dancing Shoes, Still Take You Home and From the Ritz to the Rubble – this Arctic Monkeys album contains many songs about the particular segment of the weekend outlined in Sillitoe’s book, but Turner also deemed Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not appropriate since there were “a lot of people saying a lot of things about [the band] and you don’t have control over it” at this stage of their career. Lyrical nods from the ‘80s Some lyrics in I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor (“Your name isn’t Rio, but I don’t care for sand”) flirt with Duran Duran’s 1982 song Rio : “Her name is Rio and she dances on the sand...” Elsewhere on the album, The Police’s hit single Roxanne (“...You don’t have to put on the

consistently unearths witty, unconventional rhymes and lyrical possibilities. His flair for incorporating proper Yorkshire pronunciation/ slang – including “reet” (right), “summat” (something) and “’owt” (anything) – brings WPSIATWIN ’s urban tales of dancefloor flirtation, hoodwinking bouncers and taxi-queue brawls to life. We particularly love Turner’s advice for hipsters during Fake Tales of San Francisco : “Gerroff the bandwagon, put down the ‘andbook.” A bookish album title While watching the film adaptation of Alan Sillitoe’s novel Saturday Night and Sunday Morning , the quote that would become the title of Arctic Monkeys’ debut record immediately resonated with Turner. “I thought to myself, ‘That’s a right line, I’m gonna put that in

AlexTurner delivering the now-immortal line “Don’t believe the hype” at the beginning of the I BetYou Look Good on the Dancefloor clip. Source: youtube.com/@dominorecordco

30 JANUARY 2023

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