Arctic Monkeys

Arctic Monkeys formed in Sheffield, England, in 2002. Alex Turner (vocals, guitar), Jamie Cook (guitar), Andy Nicholson (bass, later replaced by Nick O'Malley), and Matt Helders (drums) were teenagers who burned demos onto CDs and handed them out at gigs. Those CDs got ripped and uploaded to the internet.

By 2005, they were the most hyped band in Britain without having released a single record.

Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not (2006) sold 363,735 copies in its first week — the fastest-selling debut album in UK chart history. I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor went straight to number one. The album was raw, fast, and furiously witty — Alex Turner narrating Sheffield nightlife like a kitchen-sink poet with a Stratocaster.

Every album after was a deliberate left turn. Favourite Worst Nightmare (2007) was darker and heavier. Humbug (2009), produced by Josh Homme in the California desert, went psychedelic.

Suck It and See (2011) found the melody. Then AM (2013) changed everything — Do I Wanna Know?, R U Mine?

, Arabella. They absorbed hip-hop beats and Sabbath riffs and became an arena rock band. Seven BRIT Awards.

Multiple Ivor Novellos. Every album a UK number one.

Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not (January 2006) hit like a hand grenade. The View from the Afternoon opens with that telephone ring and then the drums explode. I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor was already a number one single before the album dropped.

When the Sun Goes Down captured a very specific kind of British night out. A Certain Romance closed the album with five and a half minutes of pure Sheffield poetry. 363,735 first-week copies.

The record stood for years.

Favourite Worst Nightmare (April 2007) was meaner. Brianstorm's opening drum fill is one of the most adrenaline-inducing moments in 2000s rock. Fluorescent Adolescent became the singalong anthem — that line about "the boy's a slag" chanted at every festival.

505 — that building, building, building crescendo — has become their most enduring song on streaming, a TikTok phenomenon fifteen years after release.

Humbug (August 2009) confused fans and thrilled critics. Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age produced half the album in Joshua Tree, California. Crying Lightning was the single — dark, slinky, with Turner's voice dropping into a new low register.

Cornerstone is the hidden gem — a tender, stripped-back love song that showed Turner could write ballads.

AM (September 2013) is the album that made them global. Do I Wanna Know? has over 2 billion YouTube views — that sludgy, hip-hop influenced riff is one of the most recognised guitar lines of the decade.

R U Mine? is pure filth. Arabella borrows from Black Sabbath's War Pigs.

No. 1 Party Anthem is the 3am slow dance. I Wanna Be Yours — a John Cooper Clarke poem set to music — is devastating.

The album sold 6 million copies worldwide.

Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino (May 2018) was the boldest pivot yet. Turner swapped guitars for piano, wrote songs about a hotel on the Moon, and delivered the whole thing in a lounge-singer croon. Four Out of Five was the closest thing to a single.

The Ultracheese closed the album like the end of a film. The Car (2022) went even further — orchestral arrangements, strings, brass, Turner singing like Scott Walker. There'd Better Be a Mirrorball and Body Paint are among the most sophisticated songs they've ever written.

Arctic Monkeys proved that the internet could make a band before the industry even understood what was happening. They were the first major act to break through online — before YouTube existed, before streaming, before algorithms. Kids with burned CDs and MySpace profiles made them the biggest band in Britain.

But the real legacy is the reinvention. Most bands who sell 363,000 copies in their first week would spend the next twenty years trying to recreate that sound. Arctic Monkeys did the opposite — psychedelic rock, R&B-infused arena anthems, lounge pop, orchestral baroque.

And every album went to number one. That combination of artistic ambition and commercial success is almost unheard of in modern rock.

Do I Wanna Know? alone has reshaped how guitar music sounds. That riff — half hip-hop, half Black Sabbath — influenced a generation of bands.

And 505, written when Turner was 19, became the most streamed song of the TikTok era for a band that's never had a TikTok account. The songs outlast the trends.