Hear Me Out: ‘Everything You’ve Come To Expect’ is the most important song Alex Turner ever wrote
As a music journalist, I can now firmly view this oncoming anecdote with appropriate cynicism. Abusing the trust of a record label by leaking the stream link of a yet-to-be-released album is as big a faux pas as the industry conceals, let alone for one of the world’s biggest bands. But in 2018, that happened with Arctic Monkeys’ much-anticipated sixth album, Tranquility Base Hotel And Casino.
But at 22 and still a student, I hadn’t yet developed the furrowed brow I sport now, and so excitedly snatched at the download link offered to me in the haze of a university house party.
The next morning, I tentatively flicked it on, unsure as to whether this entire rumour would be a hoax and the opening note would descend into something akin to Crazy Frog. But alas, it did not.
Instead, the twinkling keys of the band’s stunning opener ‘Star Treatment’ paled into view and I knew that this was the Monkeys reincarnated. But I knew that because I was initiated. Many played that same link, and claimed it not to be true for they expected a simple follow up to their hip-hop inspired, chart mammoth AM.
Partly because of how revered that record was, but largely because they hadn’t listened to The Last Shadow Puppets’ second album Everything You’ve Come To Expect.
Turner’s project with Miles Kane dove headfirst into the extravagant on their sophomore outing, and so the subsequent glamour of Tranquillity Base Hotel And Casino came as no surprise, even on that scratchy, illegally spread link. In fact, it came as a delight for ‘Star Treatment’ is perhaps the band’s finest example of their sonic departure.
The traces of this stunning ballad can be found quite evidently from the title track of Everything You’ve Come To Expect. A similar lyrical dreamscape sits on top of an almost menacing yet enchanting fairground melody, driven by the twinkling keys of Turner’s new favourite instrument: the piano.
“We’ve come to a point where AM [Arctic Monkeys] somewhat started resembling the last Puppets record” he explained. “I had already been working on the piano loop for ‘Star Treatment’ when I was writing ‘Everything You’ve Come To Expect’. That was when it all started to become more intertwined.”
That fateful afternoon, when Turner sat at the piano and wrote those two melodies is arguably when the entire destiny of the Arctic Monkeys changed. For some, it was a whole lot worse, waving goodbye to the indie angst that made them heroes of the sleaze scene. For others, namely myself, it was a necessary catalyst for a musical evolution that history will regard as one of the very finest.
On ‘Everything You’ve Come To Expect’, Turner gave himself permission to free his creativity from the shackles of Great Britain, and instead become more transcendental. The song’s surrealist arrangement almost acts as the portal through which fans are invited to step, only with the knowledge that once they do, things will never be the same.
But in my opinion, they will be a whole lot better.
