A brief history of the Arctic Monkeys
By Ewan King on January 16, 2023
I started listening to music frequently, as part of my day-to-day routine, when I was about 12 years old and at this point, I was straying from what my parents listened to by trying to discover what I liked most.
One day I found a particular rock band from England which I took a liking to immediately, the Arctic Monkeys.
Their biggest hit, “Do I Wanna Know,” bolsters a whopping 1.5 billion plays on Spotify alone. It was the first song they released that made the Billboard Hot 100 and helped the album “AM” to reach certified platinum in the U.S. by 2017, only 4 years after it was released.
“AM” shot them to global superstardom, earning them a 2015 Grammy Award nomination for “Best Rock Performance.” Although they didn’t take home a Grammy, they did win “Album of the Year” in 2014 at the BRIT Awards. For a cherry on top, Rolling Stone magazine listed it as number 346 in their “500 Greatest Albums of all Time” in 2020.
“A Certain Romance” is, without a shadow of a doubt, my favourite track from the Arctic Monkeys. I’m apparently not the only one who holds that opinion because The Guardian lists it as number 1 in their 20 best Arctic Monkeys songs. One thing frontman Alex Turner is always praised for, along with his voice, of course, is his songwriting. He was a protégé in that department as he wrote “A Certain Romance” when he was still a teenager.
The Arctic Monkeys are still hard at work in the studios apparently, as their newest album “The Car” was released on October 21st of this year. The new album is a massive difference from all their earlier records, in my opinion, you could even go as far as to label it a jazz record. Their style first began to change in 2018’s “Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino,” which featured many slow downed songs but still had a rock feel. They seem to have removed any rock aspect at all from “The Car.”
With a new feel to their music and a new tour soon to be announced, there’s plenty to be excited about as an Arctic Monkeys fan. Catch hits from the Arctic Monkeys on NR92.com.