“She’s pressed the star after she’s pressed unlock”: The Arctic Monkeys lyric frozen in time
One of the best things about Arctic Monkeys frontman Alex Turner is that he’s a poet without the ego.
While a fair amount of critics would probably dispute that claim, vehemently, saying he’s the most egotistical man in modern music, what they’ve probably done is confuse the carefully crafted stage persona with the real person himself. And one look at any interview he’s done — from the early days to The Car— will prove just as much.
Usually, though, this just means witnessing him stumble over his words before uttering some kind of stuttered garble about how most of what he writes isn’t that deep at all. Which is also both a blessing and a curse as an Arctic Monkeys fan, because most of the time some of your favourite lines are impossible to dig into unless you make your own mind up about what it all means.
But maybe that’s the point. As Turner once said about the debut album’s masterpiece, ‘The View from the Afternoon’, “There’s nothing clever, it’s just about anticipating the evening, finding comfort in familiarity and the fact that you know you’re bound to send a daft message or something before the sun comes up.”
Say what you like about Turner and the way he sings, but there’s no denying he’s one of the best lyricists of our generation. He’s one of the few who packs multiple meanings into the simplest of words, coming up with poetic reflections that mean everything and nothing at the same time. They’re absolutely everywhere – you’ll listen to a tune one day, then again another, and something will click. You’ll realise that something as quick to pass you by as “the weekend rockstars in the toilets are practising their lines” doesn’t just mean they’re rehearsing for a gig.
Or that “stop the world ‘cause I wanna get off with you” refers to both kissing and wanting to remove yourself from the fast-paced nature of the world itself. Or something broader like how ‘The Ultracheese’ reflects on growing up with Turner lurking in the background, saying how such ruminations are inherently cheesy because it’s like moaning about how things used to be, even if it’s in a more resigned way.
The meaning of ‘The View from the Afternoon’
Going back to ‘The View from the Afternoon’ – and ignoring the way Turner basically said it was about nothing in particular – there are many of these instances too. Like the verse, “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.”
That one bit, especially when he says “when she’s pressed the star after she’s pressed unlock”, refers simply to the way of unlocking a Nokia phone back when they were all the rage. Specifically, this captured the act of pressing the star button on the phone’s keypad to unlock it the way you would today with facial recognition. But in the verse, this part is also bracketed by Turner talking about a girl who finds an essay-length text message from someone questionable, saying a lot without saying much at all, while pinning their bad behaviour on simple over-intoxication.
A classic Arctic Monkeys-style night out, then. But is there some deeper meaning, like there usually is? Well, not really. At least, there wasn’t back then. It all seems somewhat poetic now, doesn’t it? Especially for the iPhone generation, who might not immediately pick up on the technological reference. People might hear that now and think it’s another one of Turner’s intergalactic poeticisms, that pressing the star means something otherworldly, when it was anything but. At the time, anyway.
Though perhaps that’s also the great thing about Arctic Monkeys, and Turner’s lyrics, especially. That he might have poured his heart into double meanings and making things sound poignant, or special in a way that dressed even the most mundane of things up. But with the passage of time, even dated phrases have become timeless, newly significant purely because they’ve developed more than one meaning over time.
Now, we could hear that line and think about the other ways it lands, and that maybe it’s no longer about a phone but about reaching up for something greater (“the star”) and wanting to free yourself (“unlock”) from reality.
