Sean Rocha

Arctic Monkeys still rock

When I first heard the debut song from Arctic Monkeys, “I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor,” I thought, man, these kids can rock.  And they were kids: lead singer Alex Turner was still a teenager and hadn’t a chance of dating the models he’d get later on.  The video for that song begins with Turner saying “We’re Arctic Monkeys…Don’t believe the hype” and there was hype, too much of it: their first album became the fastest-selling debut album in British music history and they were put forward as the UK’s (latest) new post-Oasis saviors of rock and roll in a world supposedly drowning in hiphop.

It was clear how this would end: the band would flame out, or break up, or someone would OD, and it would still be a hiphop world.  But almost seven years after their debut, rock is having a widespread revival and Sheffield’s Finest have outlasted the hype, settled in and I feel confident we can rely on them for another decade or so.  They’re latest song “R U Mine?” is above and in case you’re wondering the DJ at the start of the video is Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols, a man who was no stranger to the boom and bust cycle of punk fame and now hosts a radio show in LA called Jonesy’s Jukebox on KROQ. This video is so fresh that at the time I post this the view counter on YouTube is only at 15,226 — that’s a far cry from the many tens of millions who have watched “I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor,” below. Enjoy.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 27th, 2012 at 12:32 pm. It is filed under That is Genius and tagged with Arctic Monkeys, music, United Kingdom. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.