Are Arctic Monkeys the best at covering songs?
In October 2002, Alex Turner, Matt Helders, and Nick O’Malley went to see The Vines in Manchester, oblivious to the fact that this would be the moment that sparked the beginning of Arctic Monkeys.
“That was really the start,” Turner later reflected to EW. “We were going to shows whenever we could after that. We’d just started playing together that summer, in me parents’ garage. We’d be trying to play ‘Get Free’ by The Vines. And The Datsuns — they had a song called ‘Harmonic Generator’, and we used to do a cover of that.”
It’s not unusual for bands to begin from the bed of a handful of songs they already know and love, but these experiences shaped their entire sound and approach to live music. Not to mention the ways Turner would go on to connect the viscera of music itself to the art of nuanced arrangements, a small tweak here and there changing the entire feel of a song, even if it wasn’t his to begin with.
And emerging at the juncture between Oasis’ (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? and Be Here Now, as well as just after The Strokes’ Is This It, placed him and the rest of the band smack bang at the epicentre of a particular shift where an entire generation felt inspired to pick up a guitar to recreate all the songs suddenly filling up their ears and homes with a new sense of excitement, a new kind of urgency.
And so covers, for Arctic Monkeys and a host of other indie bands, wasn’t just a necessary leg-up into the spaces that mattered, they were blueprints to build upon and work around, appendices that guided sound but didn’t dictate, and the perfect grounds for latching onto the music that people still loved, with a fresh take that drove the next generation into something fresher. Or in simpler terms, the means to bridge the gap between Is This It and Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not.
Are Arctic Monkeys the best at covering songs?
However, understanding the importance of covers is one thing, while being able to pull them off in a manner that actually means something is another. So, how good are Arctic Monkeys’ covers? Looking at the early days first, pretty damn good. In 2007, during their debut headline set at Glastonbury, Arctic Monkeys took on a big risk covering Shirley Bassey’s ‘Diamonds Are Forever’ while also knowing she was set to headline just two days later. But it worked, evoking pleasantly surprised cheers from the audience in response.
Along with The Strokes covers ‘Reptilia’ and ‘Is This It’ came an influx of world-class covers, from Dion’s dreamy ‘Only You Know’ and Patsy Cline’s ‘Strange’ to Lou Reed’s ‘Walk On The Wild Side’ and The Beatles’ ‘Come Together’. There’s also the fan favourite, Tame Impala’s ‘Feels Like We Only Go Backwards’ and, of course, Nick Cave’s ‘Red Right Hand’. But weirdly, it’s not the expected songs that prove the band’s ability to pull it out of the bag, every single time – it’s also the ones so far out of their wheelhouse you wonder why they even chose to take it on in the first place.
In all fairness, everything you ever need to know about Arctic Monkeys’ prowess when it comes to covers lingers in any of those listed above. ‘Strange’, for instance, proves the earlier point about Turner’s ability to take a classic and apply the right nuances to change the entire emotion of the song. The same goes for ‘Feels Like We Only Go Backwards’. But the ones that appear more off-kilter, like their version of Drake’s ‘Hold On, We’re Going Home’, as well as Girls Aloud’s ‘Love Machine’, and Katy B’s ‘On A Mission’, serves up the right kind of curveball that puts all those lack of versatility allegations to bed once and for all.
But it also represents a broader open-mindedness with musical reinvention that, although some of their covers might sonically not be as good as other bands, proves Turner’s deep-seated understanding of how to make a song good, or different enough that it becomes good in an entirely new way. And it’s this shift that places them above the rest when it comes to covers, the knowledge that the cover song isn’t just about the basic principle of singing someone else’s words, it’s about bending the rules of art, and taking something to the next level, somewhere people didn’t think it could even go.
