The slightly prententious title to this week’s piece is not me trying to come across all earnest – it’s actually a lyric from the Arctic Monkeys song Anyways (which you can listen to below).
I’ll be honest, I have been finding things a bit difficult recently. My anxiety remains, thankfully, at arm’s length but it is its ugly brother depression that’s been gathering in a cloud over me.
That voice inside my head has been getting louder. ‘You’re useless’. ‘No one likes you’. ‘God, you’re such a loner’. I’ve been trying to use the techniques I was taught during my CBT sessions to shut that voice out, but it’s been difficult. Things came to a head on Sunday when work felt like an almost impossible task. I wasn’t fit for human consumption. I hid myself away in the kiosk. On the positive side, with some help, I got through it and was much better on Monday and Tuesday. But it can be jarring to think that the darkness can encroach at any moment. You’re never safe from it.
So much for Project Happy, eh? Well, anyway, that can wait for now. The best thing I can do is look after myself right now and tackle it again when I’m feeling brighter.
A book I recommend: I don’t read a lot of fiction but recently I’ve been engrossed in Danny Wallace’s 2012 novel Charlotte Street. I found it in a charity shop. The protagonist, Jason, sees a girl drop what she was carrying onto the pavement while she’s getting into a taxi and stops to help pick her things up. They exchange a lingering smile, then the taxi drives away. But Jason doesn’t notice that he’s still holding something of hers – a disposable camera. And from there an obsession begins!
A song I’m into: Stockport indie band Blossoms released their new single this week, a collaboration with Jungle called ‘What Can I Say After I’m Sorry?’ – the video for it features Everton manager Sean Dyche. Yep. I’ve been playing it on repeat since it came out and constantly have the chorus stuck in my head. Listen below!
If you’ve made it this far, thanks very much for reading and I’ll see you again soon.
Hello again. This Wednesday I’m going to tell you everything I have on my mind in a handy bullet point format:
In pursuit of Project Happy, I applied for a job last week and had an interview. I liked it and thought it went well, but didn’t get it. That’s fine, it was a good experience. I still have a job to go to while I search.
My friend Gavin, whom I met at university and bonded with over a shared hatred of shorthand lessons, went for a light stroll last week and ended up walking 7 miles. The orange juice and lemonade I had at Wetherspoons afterwards had never tasted so good. In future, I must wear proper walking boots and never again let him plan the route. Photos below.
Saturday was the East Anglian Derby, the football match that I love and hate in equal measure. I love it because there is no better feeling than seeing Norwich beat Ipswich but the thought of losing to that lot sickens me. Thankfully, Norwich won 1-0 thanks to a cracking free kick from Marcelino Nunez. I sat downstairs from my usual seat, with my mum and her posse of nutters, and the atmosphere was electric. A day that will live long in the memory.
Tesco announced their latest financial results this morning and they caught my eye. They made £2.3 billion in pre-tax profit in the year to 24th February, up from an already half-decent £882m the previous year. Dear old Sainsbury’s is the UK’s second biggest supermarket chain by market share, but in last year’s results made less than half as much money. Sainsbury’s will reveal this year’s results on 25th April. There’s no excuse for Tesco not to drop their prices now, right? Or pay their staff more money?
Gavin and I got so fed up with walking that we checked bus times. It never arrived, so we carried on.The view from my seat at the East Anglian DerbyMum looking sharp for the derbyCaught by the Sky cameras at the football‘I swear, I’ll walk out into that road’The route Gavin and I took
That was it then. Christmas is over and done with for another year. Is it just me, or is Christmas Day itself always a bit of a downer? The best part of the festive season is the anticipation and the build-up. Going to see the lights being switched on, the parties, feeling the atmosphere when you’re out shopping. Everyone is preparing for something. The 25th is the end of it as far as I’m concerned. In fact, I would go as far as to say Christmas Eve is better than Christmas Day.
I obviously angered God this year, as he punished me by making me work on both Christmas Eve and Boxing Day. Walking into the shop yesterday, you would never have known that Christmas had just happened. Every single decoration was gone, the music had stopped, and everyone seemed to have lost the spring in their step.
The three days before the big day were spent helping to hand out several hundred Christmas food orders, which was hard work, but at least it meant I was out of the firing line that the checkouts would have been.
Next on the agenda is, of course, the new year. Let’s talk about that.
Resolutions: I don’t bother with them any more. You can’t go to bed one night and wake up as someone completely different the next morning. Self-improvement is an ongoing, gradual process and it doesn’t do you any good to set a hard deadline like 1st January to change your ways. Yes, I’d like to lose weight but I am not suddenly going to be a health freak as we move into the new year.
I am also feeling, more than I have ever done, that I need a new job. That’s going to be something to crack on with right away.
Things to look forward to: if, like me, you’re into sport then 2024 is going to be a treat. The year ahead features a World Cup in T20 cricket (England are the holders), a European Championships in football (please, Gareth, let them off the reins) and the Olympic Games in Paris (the one hour time difference will be great for viewers on this side of the channel).
In music, there are rumours that Alex Turner of Arctic Monkeys will reunite with Miles Kane for a third The Last Shadow Puppets album – though nothing is confirmed about that yet. As discussed last week, we do know that Blossoms will be releasing an album, promising several collaborations. The Stockport five-piece will play the biggest show of their careers so far at Wythenshawe Park on 25th August, which just so happens to be my 32nd birthday.
Watch/listen/read/play: I recommend watching Mog’s Christmas, which was on Channel 4 on Christmas Eve. It was an utterly charming half-hour of wholesome fun and it featured the unmistakeable voice of Benedict Cumberbatch. Catch up with it here.
That’s it for the second edition of I Write Wednesday. Have a fantastic new year and I’ll see you next week.
A short round up of things on my mind. Things I’ve seen, read, heard etc. From my point of view, it will help me keep my eye in with my writing. As the name suggests, it will be semi-regular and published on Thursdays.
A bit of news: That Mary Earps won the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award last night and I couldn’t be happier for her. I’m not trying to be right-on or anything like that when I say I love watching the Lionesses. They seem to be more of a team than their male counterparts – and more successful. Earps is a brilliant example of the virtue of never giving up. Four years ago, she felt like her football career was going nowhere and was preparing to try something else. Last night, she received the prestigious SPotY award as a Euros winner, World Cup finalist and comfortably the best goalkeeper in the women’s game. Apparently oxygen thief Piers “Morgan” Moron has been whining (for a change) about it. I find a good rule for life is that whatever he doesn’t like is probably a good thing. Well done Mary.
A song I’ve been listening to:Blossoms will be releasing their fifth album next year and the first single from it, To Do List (After The Breakup) is a banger. It’s a collaboration with fellow Stockport musician Findlay and, in true Ronseal style, tells you what you need to do after a break up. I’m a big fan. Watch the video below.
A podcast I’ve been listening to: one I’ve been really getting into recently is The Rest Is Entertainment. It’s a weekly dissection of all things pop culture hosted by Richard Osman (of Pointless, House of Games and Thursday Murder Club fame) and The Guardian journalist Marina Hyde. A recent highlight has been Osman’s insight into this year’s race for the Christmas number one, in which he dropped the bombshell fact that 2004’s Band Aid 20 remains Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke’s only UK number one single. It’s interesting, it’s funny, and it’s been making my journeys to and from work fly by.
Something you should watch this Christmas: it’s not exactly a hidden gem, but nothing gets me into the Christmas spirit quite like the 2008 festive special of Gavin and Stacey. It’s brilliantly observed, and truly captures that sense of anticipation that the big day holds. It makes me miss those big family Christmasses I remember as a child. You can watch it on BBC iPlayer here.
Is that it?
That will do you for this week. Have a very happy Christmas, a great new year and I’ll be back soon.
Just before you go – why are you asking yourself questions?
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.
Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not album cover
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.
This clip from Saturday Night and Sunday Morning is the origin of the album’s title
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Left to right: Jamie Cook (guitar), Andy Nicholson (bass), Alex Turner (vocals, guitar), Matt Helders (drums)
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.
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.
Arctic Monkeys won the Mercury Prize in 2006 for this album
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’.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
Every now and again I am going to present a track I think you should listen to under the title ‘Listen To This’.
I have written before about my favourite band Arctic Monkeys and their sixth studio album Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino. My first track for this feature is a Monkeys song, but this one was released as a standalone single in 2006 between their debut album Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not and their second release Favourite Worst Nightmare.
It’s called Leave Before The Lights Come On.
I think the band’s frontman Alex Turner is a lyrical genius and the words to this song would fit in very well with their phenomenally sucessful debut album.
That was essentially a concept album about nightlife in a big English city. Turner drew on his experiences of nights out in his native Sheffield to craft a compelling collection of songs that almost everyone between the ages of 16 and 21 in the country could relate to.
Leave Before The Lights Come On basically describes a one night stand. It would have slotted nicely onto the album but it says something about it when a song as strong as this doesn’t make the cut. When the band performed it at Reading festival in 2006, Turner described it as ‘the black sheep of the family… but we love it all the same.’
And how can you wake up with someone you don’t love
And not feel slightly fazed by it?
Arctic Monkeys – Leave Before The Lights Come On
Turner’s lyrics are well supported by the rest of the band. Each of the four members has to work hard on it, and that was one of the things that makes me love it so much. Matt Helders gets it going with his pounding drums, Andy Nicholson (and latterly Nick O’Malley) come in with the bass and Jamie Cook combines brilliantly with Turner on guitar. The song feels very well structured – it tells a story from start to finish in 3 minutes and 47 seconds. If I was in a band, I’d definitely cover it as everyone in the band would have a big part to play.
The music video for the song features the actor Paddy Considine, who was in 24 Hour Party People, Submarine and Hot Fuzz amongst other things.
Finally, here is the band performing the song during their headline set at Glastonbury in 2007.
LEE PAYNE 