Arctic Monkeys
Arctic Monkeys were formed in mid-2002 by friends Alex Turner, Matt Helders, and Andy Nicholson (who left the band shortly after their debut album) when they were all 15 years old, Turner and Helders were neighbours and close friends, and they met Nicholson in secondary school.
From the age of five, Turner grew up alongside neighbour Matt Helders; they attended primary school, secondary school, and college together. At their primary school graduation ceremony, Turner and Helders joined some other friends in a mimed performance of Oasis‘ “Morning Glory”, Helders played the role of Liam Gallagher while Turner pretended to play the bass guitar, using a tennis racket as his instrument
The Arctic Monkeys made their live debut at The Grapes pub in Sheffield, England on 13 June 2003 supporting The Sound.
After finishing college in mid-2004, Turner took a year out to focus on the band and deferred vague plans to attend university in Manchester. He began working part-time as a bartender at the Sheffield music venue The Boardwalk. There, he met well-known figures including musician Richard Hawley and poet John Cooper Clarke.
The album’s title Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not was taken from a line from the novel Saturday Night and Sunday Morning written by Alan Sillitoe.
In 2006, Arctic Monkeys won the UK Mercury Prize for their album Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not. The Sheffield-based bands album became the fastest-selling debut in chart history after shifting more than 360,000 copies in its first week of release in Feb 2006.
In 2007, Arctic Monkeys were named the best act in the world at this year’s Q Awards held in London.
In 2008, Arctic Monkeys won three prizes, including best British band at the NME Awards held at the O2 in London. The band’s single ‘Fluorescent Adolescent’ won them best track and they won best video for ‘Teddy Picker’.
In the United Kingdom, the band became the first independent-label band to debut at number one in the UK with their first five albums.
The band have won seven Brit Awards; winning Best British Group and British Album of the Year three times, becoming the first band to ever “do the double”—that is, win in both categories—three times.
Their debut single “I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor”, which was recorded at Chapel Studios in Lincolnshire, was released on 17 October 2005 and went straight to No.1 on the UK Singles Chart. Their second single, “When the Sun Goes Down” (previously titled “Scummy”), released on 16 January 2006, also went straight to No.1 on the UK Singles Chart.
Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not became the fastest-selling debut album in UK chart history, selling 363,735 copies in the first week.
The cover sleeve of Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, showing Chris McClure, a friend of the band smoking a cigarette, was criticised by the head of the NHS in Scotland for “reinforcing the idea that smoking is okay”.
On 28–29 July 2007 the band played their biggest concert to date with two sell out shows at the 55,000 capacity Old Trafford Cricket Ground in Manchester. Billed as being the group’s own ‘mini-festivals’ both date saw support sets for Supergrass, The Coral, Amy Winehouse and Japanese Beatles tribute act The Parrots.
Turner announced plans in 2007 to form a side-project band, the Last Shadow Puppets, their debut album, The Age of the Understatement, was released in April 2008.
Many musicians have praised the band including Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page, Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl and Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich. Bob Dylan stated he has made “special efforts” to see the band live.
The band have won seven Brit Awards; winning Best British Group and British Album of the Year three times, a Mercury Prize for Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not; an Ivor Novello Award and 20 NME Awards. In addition, they have been nominated for nine Grammy Awards, and received Mercury Prize nominations in 2007, 2013, 2018 and 2023. Both Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not and AM are included in NME and different editions of Rolling Stone’s lists of the “500 Greatest Albums of All Time”.
