Picture, if you will, Alex Turner. It is not difficult. No leading man in recent history has generated so much coverage, from music mags to Instagram accounts, about haircuts, jeans, necklaces, nights out, onstage personas, offstage personas, transatlantic accents, smoking, leather jackets, Sheffield; side projects, and ex-girlfriends, and what he was like in school. And there’s a strong chance that the Turner you are imagining is Turner in 2013: jackets, dark jeans, slick cowlick, an ever-present snarl which you just know hides heartbreak and a wounded soul, about to release the career-defining record, AM.
A year before, at the opening ceremony for the London Olympic Games, the band played “I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor” and covered The Beatles’ “Come Together”: AM was released when they were front-and-centre in people’s minds, and the four-piece more than met that appetite. AM went to number 1, the band’s fifth consecutive album to do so. According to sites that compile album data based on country-specific certifications, AM has sold north of 3 million copies, outselling their 2006 debut Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not. Certainly, it had a greater impact worldwide than that landmark first album. It became their highest-charting album in the US, and in 2017, went platinum in the US, meaning that it has sold over a million units. And then there is the stomping run of singles: “R U Mine?”, “Do I Wanna Know?”, “Why’d You Only Call Me When You’re High?”, “One for the Road”, “Arabella”, “Snap Out of It”. There’s a high chance that you started humming along to each song as you read its title.
Much of AM’s legacy is tied up in Tumblr, the blogging platform and now-dusty temple, once overcrowded with horny, sad, magical, miserable images in its early twenty-tens hey-day. There were fandoms for Glee, Sherlock, and an emergent aesthetic defined by smoking, drugs, loneliness and most likely popularised by suburban teenagers dreaming of a more miserable, but crucially, more glamorous life. AM thrived here. Turner has an ear for instantly-memorable lyrics, everyone else had an eye for them, overlaying lines like satisfaction feels like a distant memory over black-and-white photos of girls smoking or displayed in a typewriter font or committed to tattoos on pale arms. People took ownership of the album, both physically (it remains one of the UK’s best-selling albums on vinyl) and as a desired projection of their own experiences: heartbreak, grimy nights out, longing for something, anything.
Since then, the band, while not disowning the album’s success, have signalled a different direction. Each subsequent album has been received as a left turn: 2018’s Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino (exquisite) and last year’s The Car (a lyrical highpoint). None of these albums have reached AM’s commercial success, which does not make them a failure (one suspects that Turner and co. might believe that to be a success). Their live performances, like at this year’s Glastonbury, have infuriated audiences thanks to the band’s tendency to change the rhythm of old favourites. Turner’s accent variations likely don’t help. Is that the sign of a hugely popular band wanting to put a new spin on classics? Or a middle finger to people who just want to sing along and have a good time? It’s easy to sympathise with both sides. If you’ve paid money to see a band you love play songs to which you’ve attached memories, you likely want familiarity. But the same creativity that crafted the music people love, also fuels that restlessness they dislike. And in 2023, after two albums of a loungier, looser sound, these performances are not exactly unexpected.
A more accurate gauge of an album’s success might not lie in the charts but its shelf life. On TikTok, it’s the effervescent and wistful “505” from their sophomore album Favourite Worst Nightmare that is the runaway Arctic Monkeys song. But AM is the album which still resonates most widely. In 2014, Miley Cyrus covered “High” on MTV Unplugged – which received drummer Matt Helders’ seal of approval – and became a hit in its own right: the YouTube video of the performance has 24 million views since it was uploaded two years ago. “I Wanna Be Yours”, an absurdly earnest blend of romance and domesticity adapted from a John Cooper Clarke poem of the same name, has been used as a sound on TikTok over 130,000 times, and some of those videos – everything from loved-up couples to graduation ceremonies – have millions of likes. The song has been streamed 1.4 billion times on Spotify (“Do I Wanna Know?” is at 1.8 billion, while “High” is at 1.3 billion).
Last year, the band’s sixth album, The Car, became their first not to reach Number 1 in the UK. It was released the same day as the tenth album by an American singer named Taylor Swift. They were positioned as polar opposites but in truth the artists have a lot more in common than might first appear: they have wrestled with a ruthlessly well-built public image, at times paralysed by it, but mostly wielding it to great effect, through intelligent lyrics and a savvy encouragement of fandoms. They also both have eras; Swift has designed a world-beating tour around this concept, organising an over three-hour setlist by album, singles, and accompanying visuals.
It seems unlikely that Arctic Monkeys will embrace a streamlined, Swiftian approach, though they have enough songs, haircuts and vibes for such an experience. Turner has expressed a discomfort with performing some of the earlier work, saying that they sound like covers to his ears. A contrast once more with Swift, who is halfway through rerecording all her albums as a way to own the masters of her music (mostly, those are faithful note-for-note recreations). What makes Swift and Arctic Monkeys enduring acts is their determination to look forward, and pursue the unexpected, though the former embraces her past, while the latter resists it. But Arctic Monkeys will never escape AM’s legacy. Fans and internet trends won’t let them, and besides, it’s an irresistible mood: why would you want to snap out of it?
Henry Wong is a senior culture writer at Esquire, working across digital and print. He covers film, television, books, and art for the magazine, and also writes profiles.
