The release of the debut album by Arctic Monkeys was a major cultural event. The kind that wouldn’t happen nowadays. The full story of the origins of the band is one to be told another day, but by 23rd January 2006 it’s fair to say there was rather a lot of hype surrounding the Sheffield four-piece. They already had two number one singles to their name, had played the Carling Stage at the Reading Festival and crowds at their gigs already knew the lyrics to their songs.

More than 360,000 copies of the album were sold in the first week after its release, comfortably securing the top spot in the charts and as I write this fourteen years later it is still the fastest selling debut album by a band. It won the prestigious Mercury Prize and well and truly set the band up for the enormous success that it continues to enjoy to this day.

The album’s title is a quote from the 1960 film Saturday Night and Sunday Morning starring Albert Finney.

It could be argued that it is a concept album, with the majority of its songs about the nightlife of Sheffield. The band have never claimed that this was their intention, and it’s most likely a coincidence. Alex Turner was probably writing about his own experiences, which as a teenager almost inevitably involved going out on the town.

Here, I go through this classic album track by track. Click on the title of each song to listen to it.

The View from the Afternoon

It’s a fast start to the album as the drums of Matt Helders crash into the guitars, leading into Alex Turner’s lyrics about the anticipation of a night out. The lines ‘And she won’t be surprised and she won’t be shocked/When she’s pressed the star after she’s pressed unlock/And there’s verse and chapter sat in her inbox/And all that is said is that you’ve drank a lot’ rather date this song and evokes memories of the tiny Nokia phones everyone seemed to have back then.

I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor

The first Arctic Monkeys song to be number one in the UK (in October 2005) and probably still their best known track. Played at the fast pace that characterised their early work, it kicks off with the great line ‘Stop making the eyes at me/I’ll stop making the eyes at you’ and paints a vivid picture of two people flirting across a nightclub. Nearly fifteen years after it was released, the band are a bit fed up of playing it now but it remains a firm fan favourite and the Monkeys even performed it at the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games.

Fake Tales of San Francisco

This song moves away from the nightlife theme somewhat and discusses how new bands often ignore their roots in the pursuit of being trendy and encourages them to ‘get off the bandwagon and put down the handbook’ and be true to themselves.

On a personal note, my landlord is adamant that he inspired part of the lyrics to this track. He has told me a story about drinking in The Boardwalk in Sheffield with a friend, who during a conversation told him ‘you’re not from New York City, you’re from Rotherham’. A pre-fame Alex Turner was working behind the bar, seemingly overhead this and put those words into this song.

Dancing Shoes

Turner points out in Dancing Shoes that everyone on a night out is trying to pull but pretends that they’re not. It’s ‘the only reason that you came’, after all.

You Probably Couldn’t See for the Lights but You Were Staring Straight at Me

This song develops the idea of being on the pull on a night out further, focusing on the narrator’s attempts to chat up a girl. It’s the most lyrically complex song on the album, delivered almost at the pace of a rapper, and I feel this verse sums it up perfectly:

‘And oh, I’m so tense and never tenser
Could all go a bit Frank Spencer
And I’m talking gibberish
Tip of the tongue but I can’t deliver it
Properly
Oh, it’s all getting on top of me
And if it weren’t this dark
You’d see how red my face has gone, yeah’

Now I don’t go to nightclubs but I feel like that’s exactly what it’s like whenever I try to speak to a woman.

Still Take You Home

We’re still on the subject of trying to pull in a nightclub here, but in this one Turner talks about how people he’d never usually fancy at any other time suddenly look stunning in this particular setting. You get to hear a bit more of the rest of the band’s abilities in this one.

Riot Van

The slow number that most albums tend to include somewhere, and a tale about a group of cheeky lads fuelled by alcohol winding up the police.

Red Light Indicates Doors Are Secured

Underrated, and possibly my favourite song on the album. Turner has always been very good at observing everyday things and making songs out of them. Here, it’s the sign you often see on the inside of a taxi. It’s time to go home after a night out now and High Green, the suburb of Sheffield the band grew up in, is mentioned. The driver won’t let them have six in, though, ‘especially not with the food’.

Mardy Bum

A love song, but not the typically gushing type. The narrator is having a bit of a row with his ‘mardy bum’ (Northern slang for irritable) of a girlfriend, and reminisces about ‘cuddles in the kitchen’. I’m sure we could all relate. Turner would make a habit of going at love songs from unusual angles in the second Monkeys album and the track D Is For Dangerous.

They don’t play Mardy Bum live very often but when they do they tend to slow it right down – they did it accompanied by a string arrangement at Glastonbury in 2013 and the result was beautiful.

Perhaps Vampires Is a Bit Strong But…

A rather brave thing to do on your first album, but here Arctic Monkeys launch something of an attack on the sort of promoters and record producers who only see music as a way to make money. You just have to listen to the lyrics yourself, they’re quite extraordinary.

When the Sun Goes Down

The second Monkeys single to top the charts, and it’s all about the prostitutes the band used to see around their rehearsal space in Neepsend in Sheffield. Rather than passing judgement on the women, it centres on the men coming to pick them up (a working title was Scummy Man).

From the Ritz to the Rubble

This one starts off about an attempt to get past the bouncers and into a nightclub and ends up reflecting on how you can say things on a night out that you just can’t say the next day.

A Certain Romance

The closer of a classic album and the closer to most of the band’s gigs in their early years. The maturity of A Certain Romance’s lyrics belie the tender age Turner was when he wrote it.

If you enjoyed reading this, I have also written about the other Arctic Monkeys albums Favourite Worst Nightmare and Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino.