The 10 songs Arctic Monkeys have played live the most
Contrary to how they were dubbed at the time, the Arctic Monkeys were anything but the ‘first internet band’. Their hype came organically through the oldest trick in the book, going out on the road and giving us weary sinners a night we’ll forget by morning and remember for the rest of our lives. Hell, 20 years on from their first show, it’s still debatable whether Alex Turner can successfully work a smartphone.
At the time of their emergence, the Arctic Monkeys might have been highlighted as an outfit utilising social media to change the rule book of the unsigned game, but Myspace was merely an inevitable symptom of the period, and the truth was a lot more punk rock than that. Like many things that seemingly explode onto the mainstream, the fuse was already flared up by a cult of Christopher Columbus’.
As the story goes after a pre-signed show at Escobar’s in Wakefield, there were footprints left on the ceiling. With billowing underground enthusiasm threatening to break through the roof, they were quickly snapped up by the independent label, Domino, and this whipped-up storm of excitement crashed into a studio and was smashed down on record.
The album even sounded live, or at least you could picture it roaring out in a flat-roof pub with errand Boddington’s slosh threatening to blow the amps. The secret ingredient to this vitality was in the brotherhood of the band. “We pretty much learnt instruments to be this band, none of us have ever been in another band,” Alex Turner drawled in 2005. “It means we’re perhaps not the best musicians but because we’ve came from the same stage we’ve worked together and then you develop your sound because we haven’t all got a different background.”
In truth, it’s hard to imagine a tighter band than that, and over the years they have only grown closer. So, for all the studio innovation that has caused them to be more evolving than a musical Pokémon, they are very much a live act. Since 2003, the band have played 1014 shows to date. Throughout those shows, a few have shone as firm favourites. Using Setlist.FM data, we’ve been able to compile the tracks that they’ve played the most so far as they gear up for another stacked summer diary. We certainly can’t wait to catch them on the road once more.
Moreover, the list below is indicative of the sort of live band that they are. They’ve never gotten too big for their boots and have happily kept their setlists as a celebration of their back catalogue to date. Naturally, it is top-loaded with older tunes because of how prolific they were when it came to touring the first two records, and personally, I’d love to have heard ‘That’s Where You’re Wrong’ a few more times, but the selection on offer is one that no fan of the Sheffield lads could ever complain about.
The 10 songs Arctic Monkeys have played live the most:
- 821 – ‘I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor’
- 663 – ‘Brianstorm’
- 560 – ‘Crying Lightning’
- 560 – ‘The View From the Afternoon’
- 521 – ‘Fluorescent Adolescent’
- 476 – ‘Still Take You Home’
- 472 – ‘Pretty Visitors’
- 459 – ‘Do Me a Favour’
- 451 – ‘505’
- 438 – ‘When the Sun Goes Down’
