Celebrating the Sheffield band's finest moments, from dirty dance floors to the Information-Action Ratio, and everywhere in between
ILLUSTRATION BY MATTHEW COOLEY. IMAGES IN ILLUSTRATION BY YUI MOK/PA IMAGES/GETTY IMAGES; MEL MELCON/"LOS ANGELES TIMES"/GETTY IMAGES; ARCTIC MONKEYS/YOUTUBE; SACHA LECCA FOR ROLLING STONE
Any band that hits as hard as Arctic Monkeys hit in 2005 runs the risk of forever being trapped in rock ’n’ roll amber, doomed to push the same four-chord boulder up a hill, or fall into a nostalgic abyss. Arctic Monkeys not only avoided that fate, they thrived in the face of it. In the 18 years since their debut single (“Fake Tales of San Francisco” b/w “From the Ritz to the Rubble,” still both among their best), they’ve crafted one of the most compelling catalogs in contemporary music, and Alex Turner has solidified his place as one of this generation’s great songwriters and frontmen.
Arctic Monkeys achieved this not through pandering or “playing the hits,” but by regularly confounding expectations: enlisting Josh Homme to gunk up their jitteriness with some desert sludge, or trading in their guitars for pianos as they embarked on a full-blown space odyssey. And through his lyrics, Turner crafted a language and style all his own. He’s a yarn weaver, as quick with a quip or a clever bit of wordplay as he is with some stark, sincere, sage distillation of the ways we live and love. Even as his metaphors have grown more oblique, his imagery a touch phantasmagorical and deliciously ludicrous, his words remain grounded in the kind of kitchen sink realism that made Arctic Monkeys’ earliest recordings so thrilling and immediate.
So here are 30 great Arctic Monkeys songs that celebrate and showcase that creativity and breadth. Like any best of list, think of this as just a best of list, not the best of list (in other words, please don’t @ us). Hopefully, though, this list expresses what’s so great about those lovable lads from Sheffield — the way they got us to stop asking, who the fuck are Arctic Monkeys?, and start wondering, who the fuck are Arctic Monkeys going to be next?
In case you’re a bit confused as to the meaning of its title — as I was when I first heard it — the “teddy picker” refers to a claw machine, symbolizing pick-me people who will do anything for fame. It’s one of several songs off sophomore album Favourite Worst Nightmare that tackle this theme, and without question the most acid-tongued. Turner, his fiery lyrics buoyed by drummer Matt Helders’ shouty backup vocals, takes no prisoners here: “They’ve sped up to the point where they provoke/You to tell the fucking punchline before you have told the joke/Well sorry, sunshine, it doesn’t exist/It wasn’t in the Top 100 list.” The man has a way with words. —M.S.
One day, there will be a jukebox musical based on Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not. It’ll be set in a working-class Sheffield club, and the “Red Light Indicates Doors Are Secured” number will be the sleeper hit of the show. We meet the lads following yet another alcohol-fueled evening as they run afoul of one of the UK’s famous no-BS cab drivers in pre-Uber times. (Listen, this gent didn’t memorize tens-of-thousands of streets and landmarks for his hackney license to put up with this lot — getting in his car with food, for fuck’s sake). The title comes from a sign on the doors of black cab — one of the many very precise details packed into this banger. Can already hear the theater audience singing along with the rallying cry of “It’s High Green mate/via Hillsborough, please!” —L.T.
This high-drama Humbug tune is a smart and effusive love story, in which Turner reflects on getting romantically entangled with a famous woman. The song unfolds at a Wednesday night party, one he anticipates he won’t enjoy and that she won’t either. In the end, he becomes more infatuated, distracted from the “waiting eyes” watching their every move. And what’s a great rock band without a great, famous muse? Like other songs from this era and through AM, the track is rumored to be about Turner’s romance with British model and TV personality Alexa Chung, who was, at the time, on the fast-track to becoming an It Girl in the U.S. after taking over the U.K. The pair would become Mick and Bianca Jagger of the Tumblr age. —B.S.
The first sign AM was going to be one of Arctic Monkeys best albums came well over a year before the album was even announced. Released in 2012, “R U Mine?” was straightforward, upbeat rock ‘n’ roll, kicking off with thunderous drums and unmistakable guitar riffs. The lyrics told a story of angsty infatuation with an elusive love interest, while Turner weaved in several pop culture easter eggs just for the hell of it. (“I threw in a Thunderbirds reference too. Just because,” he told NME. “Those references are just me being a smart ass.”) The song, simply put, is the definition of the word “banger,” becoming an instant hit that you can’t — and don’t want — to keep out of your head. “R U Mine?” showcases the band at the top of the game — and they clearly knew it, too. —J.G.
This B-side didn’t make the cut of Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not. As Turner tells it, the track was the last song he wrote while recording the album, and he felt it was a bit redundant. It’s still one of their better ones — a sharp examination of the mixed emotions people experience (confusion, regret, resentment) after a drunken one-night stand. “Leave Before the Lights Come On” has a propulsive energy to it, thanks to its rhythmic guitars, and is inextricably linked to the music video accompanying it, featuring Edgar Wright troupe members Paddy Considine and Kate Ashfield. Be sure to watch to the very end. —M.S.
To paraphrase the towering music critic Homer Simpson, a great chorus doesn’t have to “mean anything — like, ‘Rama lama ding dong’ or ‘Give peace a chance.’” “Don’t Sit Down ‘Cause I’ve Moved Your Chair” is a fine entry in rock’s cannon of utter nonsense. Its psych-tinged guitars and doom-laden low end create an ominous air, but the lyrics fully embrace the absurd. As Turner told NME, the song came from a goofy thought experiment after producer James Ford suggested the warning, “Don’t sit down ‘cause I’ve moved your chair” could be the title to “a ‘60s garage Nuggets tune.’” The band ran with it, concocting an array of imaginative scenarios that were equal parts ridiculous and dangerous — “Do the Macarena in the devil’s lair,” “Go into business with a grizzly bear,” “Bite the lightning and tell me how it tastes.” To paraphrase another towering music critic, Will Ferrell, “No one knows what it means, but it’s provocative — it gets the people going!” —J.B.
In art or film, one point perspective draws your attention to a single spot as a world unfurls around it. The plinking piano seems to be the focal point here, as Arctic Monkeys fuse rock ‘n’ roll with more classic forms of pop, jazz, and soul. There are echoes of this visual idea in the lyrics, too — the narrator’s life in deep stasis, a fixed routine where dreams remain half-realized and the most passion you can muster is when discussing something you’ve watched. And just when you think you’re on the verge of something profound, well, “Bear with me, man, I lost my train of thought.” —J.B.
Alex Turner can make even the most devastating break-up songs seem tender, sweet, and even a bit silly. In this ballad off Suck It And See, he tries to get over a former lover (presumably Alexa Chung) with existential questions that compare love to a game of laser tag. Goofy as that sounds, Turner’s lyrical capabilities are on full display with clever couplets like, “you’re still breaking hearts/With the efficiency that only youth can harness.” Each syllable drips with heartbreak, enunciated in Turner’s signature low register, paired with fuzzy production that feels old-timey and warm. —M.G.
On an album full of impossibly sexy tunes, “Knee Socks” steals the show on AM. An intoxicating guitar riff and slinky drum beat accent Turner’s lusty reflections on the cure to his January blues, who’s walking around her house “wearin’ my sky blue Lacoste/and your knee socks.” The song is a perfect slice of rock ’n’ roll flirtation, but the addicting bridge takes it over the edge in the Arctic Monkeys canon. Turner and producer Josh Homme harmonize fantasies of winning over the knee socks-wearing paramour, complete with a delightfully roundabout reference metaphor involving the use of the Ronettes’ “Be My Baby” at the start of Martin Scorcese’s Mean Streets. —B.S.
There’s something, dare we say, Beatles-esque about “Body Paint.” The shaggy structure, the baroque pop of the strings, even the bright, buzzy guitar tones that feel straight out of “The White Album” or Abbey Road. Of course, Beatles comparisons are always deeply unfair to everyone involved, especially great British bands — even if those bands have, technically, charted a course from uncut rock and roll to expansive, adventurous pop-rock. So let’s just love “Body Paint” for what it is — another high watermark for a band that’s always evolving, while still refusing to be whatever people say it is. —J.B.
Alex Turner is also possessed of a keen, observational eye, able to string together yarns about the hardships of working-class life in his native Sheffield. Here, he paints a vivid picture of a forlorn female sex worker contending with wicked pimps and johns — but it’s the tonal and signature shift midway through that dazzles you, strident bass included, reifying her paranoia and vulnerability. Originally titled “Scummy,” the writing is so evocative you feel as though you’re on that cold, dark street, watching this poor woman go through hell. —M.S.
For an ostensibly sad song, the chorus of “Piledriver Waltz” is one prolonged joke. First, there’s the tempo shift, from rock song to literal waltz, followed by the pamphlets and literature for losers, and of course, the yuk-it-up coup de grâce: “Your waitress was miserable and so was your food/If you’re gonna try and walk on water/Make sure you wear your comfortable shoes.” Around all it, there’s agony and woe, reminders of what was lost. But as a great woman kinda sorta put it, heartbreak can feel funny in a place like this. —J.B.
What happens when you set a drum machine and a languid riff to a Dr. John Cooper Clarke poem? Well, if Arctic Monkeys are doing it, you get a sultry, rock-tinged confession like “I Wanna Be Yours.” The slow jam-inspired beats swirling with Turner’s layered vocals make Clarke’s clever, anti-consumerist metaphors (“Wanna be your vacuum cleaner/breathing in your dust”) feel like a sexy proclamation from a lovesick narrator. It shouldn’t work, but it strangely does. “I thought those sweet, sexy melodies with a Johnny Clarke poem would be an awesome juxtaposition. An unlikely one,” Turner said of the track. —M.G.
“Pretty Visitors” is an early highlight in Arctic Monkeys intriguing, often fruitful, sometimes divisive partnership with Josh Homme. With its eerie organ intro, booming choir-like vocals, and absolute monster riffage, it’s an ideal blend of the band’s early frenetic energy and Homme’s penchant for all things heavy and proggy. The song also features some of Turner’s wildest, strangest lyrics, delivered at breakneck speed, before landing at a chorus that seems to stare deep into the gnashing maw of fame and performance: “All the pretty visitors came and waved their arms/And cast the shadow of a snake pit on the wall.” —J.B.
It’s Northern English tradition to take the piss out of sceney poseurs who do whatever the fuck the NME tells them, and in this amusingly scornful tune, Turner aims his pen at the Sheffield music scene — specifically, the hordes of uninspired bands in trilby hats and airtight jeans who were convinced they were the second coming of The Strokes or similar. This may be Turner’s most venomous song, and it’s a doozy: “And yeah, I’d love to tell you all my problem/You’re not from New York City, you’re from Rotherham/So get off the bandwagon, and put down the handbook.” Get ‘em. —M.S.
Arctic Monkeys announced their astounding about-face on 2018’s Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino with this high-concept lounge-lizard dream sequence set on the moon. Turner trots out his best Bowie impression as he invites listeners to visit his lunar resort, crooning sales pitches and jokes about gentrification over spacey chords. “Science fiction creates these other worlds to comment about this world,” Turner told RS, “and that idea in itself was interesting to me.” It was an inspired choice for a lead single, making the five-year gap that followed AM feel more like a century, and boldly marking a new era for the band. The title is a sly shot at record critics, and how “the people that are in charge of giving the scores, they never give a perfect 100,” as Turner explained in another interview. All we can say there, Alex, is that we’re honestly kinda over star ratings these days, too. — S.V.L.
“We like to go out to the desert to ‘brown the garlic,’” Turner told Rolling Stone, after the band recorded some of AM at Rancho De La Luna in Joshua Tree, California. “If you want to be black-and-white about it, that means we went there to write.” This is especially evident on “Why’d You Only Call Me When You’re High?” the most psychedelic the Monkeys would ever get (for further evidence, catch the dripping Dalí clock in the video). The AM highlight is pure lounge pop, all about those late-night texts you send on a bender, with a chorus so catchy it even captured the attention of Miley Cyrus (spoiler alert: her cover is excellent). Speaking to us in 2013, Turner shared the recipe for the groove-laden gem: “We took a Dr. Dre beat from like 2001, gave it like an Ike Turner Beatles bowl cut, and then set it off galloping along on a Stratocaster into a liquid live show.” We’ve been high ever since. —A.M.
On “Mirrorball,” the lead single and opening track on The Car, Turner had one goal: set the vibe. “Before the words even come in, that instrumental piece [establishes] the feel of the record,” he told The Guardian. And by “feel,” he means acute disco depression featuring strings and an AM-era melody suitable for late-night yearning. It’s a dazzling snippet of a Seventies film, where Turner is his very own Thin White Duke, a cabaret singer who delivers lines like “How’s that insatiable appetite?” On “Mirrorball,” we’re always hungry for more. —A.M.
In a rare moment of writing with someone outside his band, Turner joined forces with then-girlfriend Johanna Bennett on this playful, irresistibly catchy hit. The couple had written the song while on holiday together, doing a bit of wordplay in lieu of watching TV in their hotel. The result is a story of a woman who is getting older and increasingly more bored with her sex life. She looks back fondly on her days as a rascal and the “electric” boys of her past. “It’s great to think that it came from something we did for fun on holiday,” Bennett told The Guardian in 2007. It became a Top 10 hit in multiple countries, including the UK. “It’ll always be a good memory for Alex and I.” —B.S.
Most writers do their best to avoid sentimentality, but “The Ultracheese” is a total embrace. The title reveals all, even before the piano starts its familiar romantic roll and the bass puckers up between the schmaltzy swinging drums. But for the lonely crooner at the heart of Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino, such earnest, mawkish, self-absorbed longing and reminiscence is all that’s left. And shallow characters like that can provide deep wells to plumb. Arctic Monkeys do it sublimely with a swooning ballad sprinkled with sly musical tricks, and a soliloquy that’s still tender, funny, and just the right amount of pathetic. —J.B.
In this Seventies-inspired dreamscape, we “take a dip into [Turner’s] daydreams” of his vixen lover, Arabella. With a guitar hook that heavily recalls Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs” (so much so, Arctic Monkeys started inserting the actual “War Pigs” riff into live performances), the track is as sonically sexy as Turner’s lyrics about a bombshell with “lips like the galaxy’s edge” that “take a sip of [his] soul.” Every glistening piece of “Arabella” that makes it magical explodes when the song reaches its masterful bridge: Turner’s frantic vocals, a tantalizing guitar line, and then a solo that slices through the song, driving at full-speed. —M.G.
Arctic Monkeys blasted out of the gate in the fall of 2005 with their debut single: A fusillade of smart-assed teenage wit and overdriven riffs that set the stage for one of 21st-century rock’s few truly major success stories. All the elements of their legend were in place already, from the irresistible forward rush of the music to the audacious puns in Turner’s lyrics. (How many other songwriters would think of rhyming “Montagues and Capulets” with “banging tunes and DJ sets”?) It was an instant classic — and Turner began talking it down immediately. “It’s a bit shit,” he told one interviewer as the U.K. music-press hype ahead of Whatever People Say built to a fever pitch. “The words are rubbish. I scraped the bottom of the barrel.” Spoken with the arrogance of an artist who knows they have even better things in store. But by 2011, he’d come around on “Dancefloor”: “It’s more fun than ever to play it,” he said. “I probably fell out with it for a moment, somewhere along the way. But now when it comes around in the set, it’s just fun.” —S.V.L.
“That’s Where You’re Wrong” catches you with its simplicity — the buzzing bass, shimmering guitar, the tambourine shake that grows louder as the song progresses. Turner’s lyrics are evocative (“A pussyfooting setting sun,” “The sky is a scissor”), but the emotions feel oblique as uncertainty undercuts love. As bright as the song feels, something looms. And as Turner astutely reminds us, something always does: “You’re not the only one/That time has got it in for, honey/That’s where you’re wrong.” —J.B.
When Alex Turner and the Arctics first exploded into the public consciousness, he was branded the millennial Morrissey for his cheeky, picturesque lyrics depicting the agita and absurdity of young adulthood in Northern England, navigating punchy pubs and crowded clubs. No song captured this sense of youthful alienation more than “From the Ritz to the Rubble.” In it, Turner and his crew are turned away by a bouncer and spiral, the song crescendoing further and further into a cacophony of angular guitars and aggro percussion. When you’re twenty, every slight feels monumental. —M.S.
Few have captured the essence of a quarter life crisis better than Turner does with the indelible opening line: “I just wanted to be one of the Strokes/Now look at the mess you made me make.” But despite this bit of confessional autobiography, there’s no navel-gazing on “Star Treatment” — there’s barely any looking back in anger. “Star Treatment” is a total reinvention as Turner blurs his story with that of a washed up astro lounge lizard, simultaneously taking Arctic Monkeys from the world of uncut rock and roll to some stranger, surreal pop-rock realm. But even with such a massive musical vibe shift, Turner pointed out to Pitchfork just how quintessential that opening line is: “The style of me writing has developed considerably since the first record, but the bluntness of that line — and perhaps some other lyrics on this album — reminds me of the way I wrote in the beginning.” —J.B.
“505” is one of the most interesting tracks in Arctic Monkeys’ catalog. Built around an organ line pulled from Ennio Morricone’s The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly score, it marked a sonic departure from the otherwise punkish Favourite Worst Nightmare. “505” laid the groundwork for future experimentation, with a pensive eeriness that matches Turner’s anticipation as he navigates his way back to a girlfriend’s apartment. Even the subject of the song differed from the band’s usual topics; as Turner told NME it was “the first proper love song [they’ve] done.” The change was a welcome one, and the 2007 track has proven its staying power with two viral revivals since its release. During the mid-2010s Tumblr era, posts containing the dark lyric, “I’d probably still adore you /With your hands around my neck,” were plentiful on the site. In 2022, “505” got a streaming bump after circulating on TikTok — this time for the jolting bridge in which Alex screams, “I crumble completely when you cry.” —M.G.
Even casual Arctic Monkeys fans remember the first time they heard the riff to “Do I Wanna Know?” A decade later, the moment is still cemented in our brains — and not just because the song taught American teens what a “settee” was. Up until that point, in the summer of 2013, our only taste of AM was the frenetic energy on “R U Mine?” No one was expecting Turner to pivot to a molasses-level tempo and casually deliver a seductive masterpiece about the possibilities of unrequited love. “I suppose I do want to think of ‘Do I Want to Know?’ as ‘Are You Lonesome Tonight?’ with a jet-pack on,” he told us in 2013. The song has 1.5 billion views on YouTube, and we’ll watch it again and again, if not to imagine what it would have sounded like if Haim had sung those falsetto backing vocals. “We had to finish our record,” Este Haim told NME, of Days Are Gone. “That would have been our biggest dream come true: to sing on an Arctic Monkeys record. It was one of the most painful calls to say no. Maybe the worst day of my life.” —A.M.
Everything great about Arctic Monkeys can be traced back to “A Certain Romance.” Turner seemed to admit as much in a 2022 interview with NME, saying the song “showed that we did actually have these ambitions beyond what we once thought we were capable of.” Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, as the title suggests, is an album overflowing with assured assertions of self — especially the grandiose kind people make as they exit adolescence and try to grasp onto adulthood. What makes “A Certain Romance” special is the way it captures that grasping. What starts as a critique of people who are ostensibly less sophisticated, stylish, or romantic, soon becomes an astute deconstruction of the snark, cynicism, and us-vs-them posturing endemic to youth. It’s a rather tender, empathetic note to land on, and Arctic Monkeys emphasize it not with words, but two dueling livewire guitars twisting around each other in a perfect tangle of uncertainty and exultation. —J.B.
Leave it to Alex Turner to have the only song on Humbug written in a major key also be the album’s most incisive and heartbreaking. The track’s narrative sees Turner looking for an old lover at her old haunts, and in the faces of new lovers. Over three verses, these romantic distractions turn down the singer and his odd request to call them by his ex’s name. Then in the perfect songwriting twist, he finds someone who’ll oblige in the final verse — his ex’s sister. Turner has often spoken about how proud he is of “Cornerstone,” which was inspired by Patsy Cline. “I was listening to a lot of country music when I wrote it, and it had that formula where the verses always end the same way,” he told Vulture in 2018. “Not to sound like a wanker, but with that song, I had an idea and it wrote itself. I’m not sure how I ended up with the girl’s sister in the last verse, though. When I was in school, I think I probably fancied my girlfriend’s sister or something.” “Cornerstone” is as much a favorite of Turner’s as it is of Arctic Monkeys fans; the track has become a staple on their setlist in the 14 years since its release. —B.S.
This isn’t just for the bit. If you want to pinpoint the “where are you going, where have you been” fulcrum for Arctic Monkeys, it’s hard to do better than “No. 1 Party Anthem.” It’s the piano ballad outlier on 2013’s AM, otherwise one of the best rock guitar albums of the last 20-odd years, and it points to the far out spaces the band would explore on their next two records. Yet it’s also vintage Arctic Monkeys, one of the best late-night tales Turner has ever told (and he’s told tons). “To me, that song is about a kind of midnight where you feel like you’re in this parallel universe,” he put it to Rolling Stone in 2013.
On “No. 1 Party Anthem,” Turner is no longer navigating the dingy debauchery of Sheffield nightclubs; he’s on the prowl at some high-end spot, lonely and rakish. But while the setting is different, the stakes remain the same. There’s yearning and self-consciousness, intoxicated posturing and sober disillusionment, lingering adolescent anxiety and a particular proclivity for poor decisions: “It’s not like I’m falling in love, I just want you/To do me no good/And you look like you could.”
The one thing that can cut through all that noise, or at least help someone make sense of it? Music. An obvious answer, and also a kind of cheesy, slightly embarrassing one. Turner gets that, deeply and sincerely. Which is why “No. 1 Party Anthem” culminates around a rousing call — at once a genuine plea and a drunken request shouted at an uninterested DJ — for some nameless, ideal song. Because the song always has the answer. No matter what it is, even if it changes from one night to the next. That’s why it’s the best one ever. —J.B.
From Rolling Stone US.
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