The 10 worst Arctic Monkeys lyrics
Arctic Monkeys are undoubtedly one of the biggest bands of our time. Sure to go down in history as one of the greatest in guitar music history, the band have dominated indie since their debut release, Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, back in 2006. Going on to sweep numerous awards and reach the dizzying heights of global success, the Sheffield boys are truly on top.
Fronted by Alex Turner, it’s his off-the-cuff lyrics that have made the band what they are. Merging slang, sentiment and plentiful literary and cinematic references, he seems to get wordier and wordier with every album. They’ve come a long way from the gobby lads they were on their debut when they sang about aggressive club bounces, local legends and teenage heartache.
It would be wrong to expect the band, now in their late 30s, to be writing about the same adolescent stuff. On their latest album, The Car, Turner’s lyrics continued their journey towards abstraction as he seemed to get his thesaurus out and pack the album out with big words. While some love the band’s more mature style, it’s a divisive evolution amongst fans.
We can all agree that Alex Turner is a talented lyricist who will likely be granted the same icon status afforded to Bob Dylan or John Lennon as time passes. However, with seven albums and countless EPs, not every lyric is as slick as it could be. Amongst the length of discography, there are some duds, with Turner occasionally writing a truly terrible liner.
Whether you agree or not, here are ten of the worst Arctic Monkeys lyrics.
The 10 worst Arctic Monkeys lyrics:
10. ‘Do Me A Favour’
“Curiosity becomes a heavy load / Too heavy to hold, will force you to be cold”.
He was almost onto something here, and then he wasn’t. This 2007 album cut taken from Favourite Worst Nightmare starts off so strong. A classic Alex Turner take on a breakup song, written from the perspective of the guilty party that knows they’re in the wrong, ‘Do Me A Favour’ is a rolling, angsty number.
The chorus of “do me a favour and break my nose” has all the markings of a great Arctic Monkeys song, being at once full of emotion and totally spontaneous. But by the time you get to the bridge, it’s like Turner ran out of words. The lazy, overly poetic tag on of “will force you to be cold” feels so limp as a lead up to the song’s crescendo. Sounding like a desperate attempt to find a rhyme, that one little line ruins what would be a perfect track.
9. ‘Balaclava’
“Now the shaggers perform / And the daggers are drawn / Who’s the crooks in this crime?”
Even if you try to ignore the staggering grammatical mistake in this lyric as Turner sings “who’s the crooks” rather than asking who the crooks are, this line is still groan-worthy. In their early days, Arctic Monkeys were masters at mixing slang with rich, descriptive lyrics. Back when their Sheffield accents were still strong and long before LA came calling, the northernism of their first albums made their lyricism unique and fun.
But this one feels a bit too far. “Now the shaggers perform” feels more juvenile than jokey on 2007’s ‘Balaclava’. It doesn’t help that, in general, ‘Balaclava’ is not their finest work, generally leaning too heavily on Turner’s original shouty style of singing. Providing little to no substance, ‘Balaclava’ really has nothing going for it, especially not the lyrics.
8. ‘Black Treacle’
“Belly button piercings in the sky at night”.
By 2011, the boys were a long way from Yorkshire. On Suck It And See, Alex Turner stepped into the crooner shoes he still wears today, letting his lyrics get longer, busier and more overtly poetic. No longer content to just say it as it is, every little detail was made metaphorical. And while some results were beautiful, some were merely a bit painful.
This lyric from ‘Black Treacle’ is eye-roll inducing. Sexualising and over-sensationalising every little detail, this imagery feels so tenuous that it crosses the line into just being a bit confusing. The central black treacle metaphor for the night sky is more than enough; this opening image feels unnecessary and simply, not very good.
7. ‘Still Take You Home’
“And I’m struggling, I can’t see through your fake tan”.
Maybe it’s wrong to view lyrics from the problematic 2000s indie sleaze culture through today’s lens, but the pattern of early Arctic Monkeys lyrics often coming along with a side of misogyny will have you wincing now. Truly indulging in the voice of the adolescent boys who wrote the tracks from their debut, that boyishness often comes through in icky ways.
‘Still Take You Home’ is one of the worst of them. A three-minute-long takedown of a girl’s appearance punctuated with the objectifying chorus of “but I’d still take you home”, it’s not their finest hour. So, while some fans might not like Alex Turner’s more abstract modern lyrics, at least they’re not quite as cutting and insulting as these.
6. ‘Jet Skis On The Moat’
“Pyjama pants and a Subbuteo cloak / You know that it’s alright if you wanna cry”.
With all said and done, at least Alex Turner seemed to know what he was saying on the band’s earlier tracks. Over the course of their discography, the group’s lyrics have become more and more cryptic as they moved away from their original rock band sound. And while some like the change, it’s proved controversial as some fans beg the boys to return to their 2010s glory days.
It’s no wonder, really, when the new tracks contain lyrics as loose as these. Their latest album, The Car, fails to come close to catchy as lyrics like these from ‘Jet Skis On The Moat’ mean seemingly nothing. Feeling more like a list of loose thoughts with an attempt to tie them into some kind of sentiment, they feel confused.
5. ‘Star Treatment’
“So who you gonna call? The Martini Police”.
You can trace the origin of this confusion back to the band’s 2018 semi-concept album Tranquility Base Hotel And Casino. Long gone were the songs about love, loss and lively nights out as the band instead sang about living on the moon.
Album opener ‘Star Treatment’ immediately spelt out the switch up as Alex Turner cuts through in a performance more akin to spoken word than rock. That might have been fine if the lyrics meant much at all. By the time you hit the chorus and Turner’s silly, sarcastic reference to “the martini police” comes through, the eye roll is so aggressive it turns into a headache.
4. ‘Don’t Sit down ‘Cause I’ve Moved Your Chair’
“But just don’t sit down ’cause I’ve moved your chair”.
Every single line from the 2011 Suck It And See track could make this list, with every lyric being worse than the one that came before it. Why the boys thought this track was good enough to make a record is beyond explanation. Nothing but a list of emotionless clichés on the general topic of recklessness and revenge, the song delivers nothing but irritability.
When we know the lyrical heights Alex Turner can reach, writing some of the most amazing songs of our generation and never shying away from diving deep into his own literary world, this track feels bafflingly bad. Not even sounding big enough to cause a mass crowd singalong, ‘Don’t Sit down ‘Cause I’ve Moved Your Chair’ feels like one of the band’s biggest flops.
3. ‘2013’
“It’s two thousand and thirteen all across the galaxy”.
Arctic Monkeys learned the hard way that if you write an entire song about a random, mid-decade year, the second that year is over, it will be forgotten. But in the case of ‘2013’, the band might be thankful for the mass amnesia surrounding the song as it stands as one of their worst lyrical efforts.
Containing painfully modern references and generally meaningless sentiments like “as for Instagram and Twitter, She got caught in both lassos”, it’s hard to decide if Alex Turner is celebrating or slagging off the year. Centring around the boring chorus of “It’s two thousand and thirteen all across the galaxy”, the song lost any sort of meaning or interest the second that line was no longer factual.
2. ‘Brick By Brick’
“I wanna build you up (brick by brick) / I wanna break you down (brick by brick)”.
‘Brick By Brick’ isn’t so much bad as it is painfully boring. It feels more like someone’s first-ever attempt at writing a song than the sort of track you’d find on a fourth album. Containing nothing but cliché rhyming couplets and a repetitive chorus refrain, it’s held up only by a few good guitar licks. The repetition of “I wanna rock and roll” is so banal that you instantly want to hit skip and never listen to the song again.
To make matters even worse, the band chose ‘Brick By Brick’ to be the opening single as they unveiled Suck It And See, threatening to tank the release before it even landed. Supposedly inspired by Iggy Pop, the song was an exercise in trying to cut down their lyrical word count. It seems the band themselves know this isn’t their finest work, describing the track as “quite loose” and “dumbed down”.
1. ‘Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino’
“Kiss me underneath the moon’s side boob”.
And here we have it, peak Alex Turner’s overly-poetic pretension. Even if you love Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino, with the album definitely featuring some great lyrical moments, you can surely admit that this is not one of them. Throughout their discography, there are a fair few moments where Alex Turner makes you roll your eyes, but none as aggressively as this one.
Adding an unnecessary, nonsensical descriptor has become an Alex Turner signature in the band’s later efforts. Feeling like nothing but an attempt to make an image deeper, the result is painfully pretentious. It’s one of those lyrics that’s so bad it makes you cringe. This one deserves to keep Alex Turner awake at night, wondering why he wrote something so embarrassing.
