This week Arctic Monkeys’ I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor turns 20, and we all know what happened from there. 4 teenagers from Sheffield blew up in the biggest way possible.
20 years. Half my lifetime, half their lifetime. So, it felt timely to reflect and take a look back at all of their albums. I’ve been asked for this quite a lot over the years so here you go – my ranking of Arctic Monkeys albums from ‘worst’ to best. And if you disagree, well that’s where you’re wrong!
7. Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino
I just can’t get on board with this album. I’ve tried and I’ve tried. Individual songs like One Point Perspective have grown on me over time, and there are some great lyrical flourishes dotted in there, but the album as a whole just feels melancholy and directionless. I don’t think I’ve ever managed to listen to it start to finish in its entirety. I’ll be forever grateful for it as it led us to The Car which is lovely, but it will forever be the weak link in Arctic Monkeys back catalogue for me.
6. Favourite Worst Nightmare
Most of the individual songs on this album I do enjoy, Old Yellow Bricks is a beautiful story of growing up in a nothing town in northern English, Brianstorm will forever be a masterpiece and I love that if you look carefully tracks like The Only Ones Who Know give you such an insight into where the bands sound would end up, but as a collection it suffers from the sophomore struggle. Listening from start to finish, it’s not cohesive, there’s nothing that really draws you into it and despite these individual points of excellence it just feels a bit muddled, like they weren’t quite sure what they wanted to sound like. I wish we could hear what this album would have sounded like if they’d given it another year.
5. Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not
This is where I think my list might get a little controversial. I really like all of the albums from this point onwards and I struggled for months before finally deciding on the current order.
Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not is a great album. For a debut. By a bunch of teenagers. Was it worth the hype at the time? Yes. Is it better that their other albums? No, sorry. And nostalgia doesn’t change that.
I’ve also still never really forgiven Alex Turner for not putting Bigger Boys and Stolen Sweethearts on the album to be honest. (Also: little confession, because I have Beneath The Boardwalk which I still listen to, so I probably didn’t really listen to WPSIATWIN properly from end to end until like 2019).
Songs such as Mardy Bum and A Certain Romance are eternal indie anthems and some of Turner’s finest work. The lyric “And all the weekend rockstars are in the toilets practicing their lines” from Fake Tales of San Francisco is in my top 5 Arctic monkeys lyrics ever, and you can’t deny the incredible witticism on offer in these early songs, but ignoring the musical and lyrical growth of the band beyond this just isn’t fair.
4. The Car
I think this album is an absolutely underrated masterpiece. It moves away from that “I don’t really want to be here” melancholy vibes of Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino into a genuinely sad, regretful reflection on a life in the spotlight. The orchestral arrangements and the stripped back sound are perfect. It’s Alex the control freak at his finest. He also managed to fully move away from the bravado of AM and tracks such as Perfect Sense and Big Ideas see him being genuinely vulnerable. It’s the ideal bookend to this stage of their career.
3. Suck it and See
I love love love Suck it and See, and it pains me a little to rank it below AM. I think part of that is also because this was the last album before they truly globally blew up as a band and the fandom changed, and it’ll always hold a special place in my heart because of that. It’s lyrically Arctic Monkey’s finest album for me: “Rarer than a can of Dandelion and Burdock”, “Called up to listen to the voice of reason and got the answering machine” or the entirety of Love is a Laserquest. It’s wonderful, poetic pop-indie. I could listen to it every day for the rest of my life.
Why’s it here and not at the top? Even though I prefer it to AM, musically, objectively AM is a better album. And Humbug changed my life. Oh, and I also hate Brick by Brick about as much as I dislike Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino.
2. AM
AM, the album I’m pretty sure Alex himself described as the best thing he’s ever made. (Or something along those lines, ask Zane Lowe). Hot off the heels of Suck it and See, the new sound on this took everyone by surprise. However the blending of rock with hip hop beats was masterful. It’s creative and unique and it will surely go down as the band’s most iconic work. Probably unusually, it’s No. 1 Party Anthem that has risen to the top as my favourite from this album. (Yeah, it’s weird I don’t like Tranquility Base, I know).
1. Humbug
And I will fight anyone who disagrees with me on this. I will forever be grateful to Josh Homme for his impact on this beauty of an album. The subtle complexity, the riffs, the layers. it’s exquisitely put together. It pushed Alex far enough out of his comfort zone that it pulled out this new sound, but not so far that we lost everything that was great about his early work. The lyrical creativity, the story telling, it’s magical. That little layer of darkness, the thematic strength of the album – those things that Homme does so well in his own projects really draw out something wonderful. I still believe this album more firmly set Alex on track for the rest of his career. This is truly the one that, without it, we wouldn’t have had anything that came after. And Cornerstone is one of the most stunning songs ever written.
Regardless of whether you agree with my list or not, it’s been a heck of a couple of decades!