100 Best Albums
- SEP 9, 2013
- 12 Songs
- Favourite Worst Nightmare · 2007
- AM · 2013
- AM · 2013
- AM · 2013
- Favourite Worst Nightmare · 2007
- AM · 2012
- AM · 2013
- Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not · 2005
- AM · 2013
- AM · 2013
Essential Albums
- Back in 2006, Arctic Monkeys were cast as revolutionaries for uploading music to the internet. There’s nothing quite so radical about their debut, which fuses a punk snarl with the sharp tunes and agitated rhythms of New Wave, but it’s delivered with such invigorating panache that every note sounds fresh. The clincher is Alex Turner, who can carve knowing vignettes from any situation—whether he’s idly fantasizing in a checkout line (“I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor”) or, on “Mardy Bum”, lamenting a girlfriend’s volatile mood (“I see your frown and it’s like looking down the barrel of a gun.”)
Albums
Artist Playlists
- Britpop bounce and garage rock swagger fuel the band's impish charm.
- Arctic Monkeys’ Alex Turner joins Zane for a deep dive into the band’s new album.
- The Brit rockers look good on the dance floor—and on the screen.
- The English rock band brings their world tour stateside. Get the full set list.
- Spiky guitar pop, sludgy blues rock, and a whole lot of attitude.
- Meet the artists that helped make the Monkeys what they are today.
- Pairing hints of funk and glam with stunning lyricism.
- A deep dive into the album, which turned 10 this year.
- Celebrating 10 years of the iconic album.
- Strombo revisits the English band’s past work.
- Conversation around the band's latest album 'The Car.'
- The band has the cover, plus Carly Rae Jepsen joins live.
- Matt celebrates the band as they announce their return.
More To See
About Arctic Monkeys
The mid-2000s had no lack of garage-rockin’ skinny-jeaned upstarts vying to join The Strokes and The Libertines on the cover of NME. But not only were Sheffield, England’s Arctic Monkeys able to whip up a media frenzy worthy of their heroes, they managed to thoroughly transcend it and become a rock institution unto themselves. Only 16 when he founded the band in 2002, singer/guitarist Alex Turner swiftly established himself as a songwriter of uncommon wisdom and wit, helping make the band’s scrappy 2006 salvo, Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not, the fastest-selling debut album in UK history. If that record suggested Turner was a natural inductee to the Ray Davies/Paul Weller/Damon Albarn school of British pub-rock philosophers, the Monkeys refused to settle for being a homegrown phenomenon and set their sights on global domination. By 2009’s Humbug, they were seeking riff-thickening advice from producer Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age, while their 2013 blockbuster, AM, cracked the U.S. Top 10 with the sort of sing-along stompers (“Do I Wanna Know?”, “R U Mine”) naturally suited to the festivals they routinely headlined. But once they established themselves as one of the world’s biggest rock bands, the Monkeys proved they could be among its most adventurous, too: On 2018’s glam-jazz concept album Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino, Turner weaves a complex sci-fi narrative to address real-world woes like capitalism and media addiction, keeping his feet on the streets even as his band now orbit the stars.
- ORIGIN
- Sheffield, England
- FORMED
- 2002
- GENRE
- Alternative