It was only the year 2007 and yet it had already been quite the ride for Arctic Monkeys. Entering their fifth year since forming, they already had two number one singles and the fastest selling debut album by a band to their name. The Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, even claimed to be a fan – though when pushed he couldn’t name any of their songs. The time had come to tackle the difficult second album.
On 23rd April 2007, Favourite Worst Nightmare was released. Not as raw as the previous year’s Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, the twelve songs feel more polished. Alex Turner’s superb observational lyrics go a little deeper and branch out further than musings on Sheffield’s nightlife.
The album opens with Brianstorm, a loud and confident start which apparently describes a man the band met backstage after a gig in Tokyo. ‘Brian’ left such a big impression on the Monkeys – ”Cause we can’t take our eyes / Off the t-shirt and ties combination?’ – that he became the subject of a song. Brianstorm has become an absolute staple of their live sets, a real crowd pleaser, and they are still performing it now. Here it is from Lollapalooza in Argentina in 2019:
Next comes Teddy Picker. If you’ve ever been to one of the arcades at the seaside, you’ll know what a teddy picker is – those machines that have a claw you try to grab prizes with. Turner uses those teddy pickers as a metaphor for the pursuit of fame and the downside of it. ‘And it’s the thousandth time that it’s even bolder / Don’t be surprised when you get bent over / They told you, but you were gagging for it’. It’s basically a warning to be careful what you wish for.
Track three is D Is For Dangerous, the chorus of which gives the album its title:
‘D is for delightful
And try and keep your trousers on
I think you should know you’re his favourite worst nightmare’
Love is certainly not an unexplored topic in music, but I have always admired the slightly different way Alex Turner approaches the subject. Like in the first album’s Mardy Bum, which describes a row between a couple, D Is For Dangerous is about being in love with someone you know it won’t be easy to deal with.
The album moves on to a song about casual sex. Balaclava, with its catchy bass throughout, is all about not becoming emotionally attached to the girl you’ve just pulled. ‘The confidence is the balaclava’.
Next is my favourite song on the album, Fluorescent Adolescent. It’s probably the best known one on it, and the one you’re most likely to have heard somewhere else (it was, for example, on the soundtrack to The Inbetweeners). It starts with two guitars crashing into each other, leading into Turner’s lyrics about getting older. I can do no better than to relay the whole of the first verse:
‘You used to get it in your fishnets
Now you only get it in your night dress
Discarded all the naughty nights for niceness
Landed in a very common crisis
Everything’s in order in a black hole
Nothing seems as pretty as the past though
That Bloody Mary’s lacking in Tabasco
Remember when you used to be a rascal?’
Turner was just 20 years old when he wrote that with the help of his then-girlfriend Johanna Bennett.
The band slowed the song down and added a snippet of Dion’s Only You Know to it to make for a highlight of their headline set at Reading in 2009:
Like most albums, Favourite Worst Nightmare has a slower tune in the form of Only Ones Who Know. I would almost describe the guitars on this song as haunting. It’s great to listen to with headphones on. It feels like a sad song, and sets this album apart from their debut, which had a cheekier tone throughout.
In Do Me a Favour Turner once again turns the classic break up song on its head by writing it from the perspective of the person in the wrong. It starts with Matt Helders thundering on his drums and describes, in Turner’s words, ‘a goodbye’.
‘It’s the beginning of the end
The car went up the hill and disappeared around the bend
Ask anyone, they’ll tell you that it’s these times that it tends
To start to break in half, to start to fall apart, hold on to your heart’
We are into the second half of the album and This House is a Circus signals a change in tone for the album. A wild night out is described in what Turner calls his favourite song from the record.
Next, it’s If You Were There, Beware and we are back onto the topic of fame. In this one, Turner talks about how annoyed he is at the way the media treats his loved ones. In terms of the instrumentation it’s the clearest hint we get of what was to come on the third Monkeys album, Humbug, which represented a major shift in sound for the band. Lyrically, it seems Turner’s girlfriend is being hounded by the paparazzi:
‘If you were there, beware the serpent soul pitchers
Can’t you sense she was never meant to fill column inches
Ain’t you had enough? What you’re trying to dig up
Isn’t there to be dug; the thieves help the thugs
As they’re trying to beat the good grace of a sweetheart
Out to the point she’ll comply’
The bad thing in Do The Bad Thing is having an affair, and Old Yellow Bricks is all about finally getting out of your hometown and realising that the rest of the world isn’t up to much after all. An interesting one, given that nowadays two of the band live in Los Angeles while the other two have settled back down in their native Sheffield.
The album closes with 505, a song recently named the best of all Arctic Monkeys songs in a radio station poll and a track the band have used to bring the curtain down on countless live performances over the years. It starts off with the sound of an organ, the same chords you can hear in the Western film The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, and suddenly ups the tempo in the final third of what Turner described as ‘the first proper love song we’ve done’. Additional guitar for this track was provided by Miles Kane, who would form the supergroup The Last Shadow Puppets with Turner later in 2007.
So there we have it – the twelve songs that made the difficult second album something of a breeze for Arctic Monkeys. Favourite Worst Nightmare went straight to the top of the album chart and secured the band their first headliner slot at Glastonbury. I will leave you with the band’s brilliant performance of 505 from Glastonbury 2013.
LEE PAYNE 