‘Saturday Night And Sunday Morning’: The film that gave Arctic Monkeys their debut album title
The streets of Sheffield are paved with music. Each footstep is a drum beat, adding rhythm to this cityscape, constantly humming a tune. Here is where Jimmy Page collapsed, thus beginning his trajectory towards Led Zeppelin. It’s where Jarvis Cocker fell out a window and began writing about the people he shared a hospital ward with and where Def Leppard started writing hair metal as if they were in California; however, without a doubt, the band put the city on the map the most was Arctic Monkeys.
This isn’t an accident, either. Great musical minds from Sheffield dominated the charts before they came onto the scene, but everyone associated Arctic Monkeys with Sheffield so heavily because their entire debut album was completely dedicated to the city. Elements of its nightlife, its people, and the antics that follow people around flooded every track.
Working-class Sheffield suddenly entered the charts, and the romantic nature of takeaways, taxis home, and trying to pull was projected into the speakers of listeners around the country. This was one of the most realistic records that had ever been made, comparable to folk music in the way it wrote about the world, holding nothing back; however, it was reflective of a different time.
The success of the album spoke for itself. Arctic Monkeys skyrocketed to fame, and every band in Britain suddenly started writing in a similar style. There are still copycat bands to this day, as while Arctic Monkeys’ sound might have changed drastically, there are still musical outfits out there keen on recapturing the magic of that debut.
Given that the record is so deeply rooted in the truth behind the city, it’s interesting to find out that the album’s title, Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, isn’t a reference to preconceived ideas about northern towns but rather a quote from a movie.
Saturday Night And Sunday Morning is a film from the ‘60s about a factory worker who has an affair with one of his co-worker’s wives. It was a present given to the band from their record label, and something within the film resonated enough that they decided to name their debut record after it. The direct quote is, “Whatever people say I am, that’s what I’m not. Because they don’t know a bloody thing about me. God knows what I am.”
Using a line from a movie seems like a contrast to the rest of the album, which contains lines taken from the everyday lives of each band member. The realistic nature of the album meant that Arctic Monkeys struggled a great deal when writing the follow-up to it, as they didn’t want to pigeonhole themselves as being a band who only wrote about the streets of Sheffield.
“It’s fine, just not that considered,” he said when discussing their second album, Favourite Worst Nightmare, “Though I’m really glad we did it – otherwise, I might still be sitting around trying to write ‘Hallelujah’. After that, we all thought we needed to move on… If only to prove that it weren’t all about those 12 songs about the chip shop.”
