Arctic Monkeys debut album, Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, romanticized the everyday and predicted the hereafter.
On January 23, 2006, Arctic Monkeys unveiled their debut record: Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not (WPSIATWIN). Four 20-year-old boys stood for the incoming internet age, as critics either hailed the album as the soul of Northern England, or used it as an exemplifier of assembly-line, premature internet music. In actuality, either interpretation was accompanied by 120,000 first-day sales and a new record for fastest-selling British debut album. Arctic Monkeys has maintained an equally high level of success over the past 20 years, continuing to debut at number one for their following four album releases, headlining Glastonbury three times, and influencing a generation of subsequent artists.
Yesterday, January 22, 2026, Arctic Monkeys released their first piece of music since 2022’s The Car.The new track, “Opening Night,” was recorded for the upcoming HELP(2) benefit album from War Child Records. The song is an amalgamation of the Arctics’ last seven releases: the bass fuzzy, the lyrics contemplative, and the build slowly earned. “Popular slogans and a bucket of pain / Supercomputer on a jolly crusade,” frontman Alex Turner sings in his fragmented lyrical style of the past ten years.
The Car, in addition to its 2018 predecessor, Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino, and Turner’s 2016 side project, Everything You’ve Come to Expect, sounds more cinema score than rock and roll record. Previous releases AM, Suck it and See, and Humbug ranged from moody post-punk revival to acoustic lovesong ballads.Arctic Monkeys’ constantly changing sound has been accompanied by both critical praise and fan annoyance, but the band has never strayed from their essential ethos.
Although unpolished and grandiose, the twenty-year-old Arctics laid bare their intentions on “Who The Fuck Are Arctic Monkeys?” Turner wrote, “‘Cause everybody’s got their box / Doing what they’re told / You pushed my faith near being lost / But we’ll stick to the guns / Don’t care if it’s marketing suicide / We won’t crack or compromise.” The band went on to lampoon award show after award show after award show, projecting a sardonic view of the music industry tempered only by the genuineness of their music.
“The point’s that there ain’t no romance around there / And there’s the truth that they can’t see / They’d probably like to throw a punch at me / And if you could only see them, then you would agree / Agree that there ain’t no romance around there,” Turner sang on “A Certain Romance.” Much of this record deals with stories of raucous nights out and short-lived flings, but the overarching cockiness of the album fails to disguise its fundamental sense of anxiety.
The band are young, impassioned, and unsure of the expectations that success will bring. “Well I ain’t got no dollar signs in my eyes / That might be a surprise but it’s true,” Turner sings on “Perhaps Vampires is a bit Strong But…”
The enduring themes of WPSIATWIN are unveiled through an ethnographical yet highly romanticized portrayal of young adult life. Soon to come was introspection and metaphor, but the straightforward autobiography of WPSIATWIN preserves Turner’s proclivity to simultaneously reject and poeticize the everyday. This artistic approach to rebellion still holds merit with contemporary albums, like Charli XCX’s Brat.
The two records share many similarities–both Turner and XCX recount stories of typical nightlife slanted by an instinctive sense of mystique; both artists project authenticity even while donning an overconfident and fanciful persona; and both records are often undervalued as simple party albums. From “A Certain Romance” to “Everything is Romantic,” AM and XCX assert–with all the arrogance necessary–that young life is shaped by how you envision it, and both artists choose to uphold an imaginative, expressive outlook.
WPSIATWIN investigates the discussion of fame, identity, and desire that most artists eventually confront. Arctic Monkeys, always precocious, dealt with these fears to start out with, and now, twenty years on, make good on their manifesto with music that is ever-changing, highly rewarding, and most of all, their own.
I’m an writer and photographer currently studying Radio-TV-Film at the University of Texas at Austin. Some of my favorite artists are Arctic Monkeys, Faye Webster, and Doja Cat. I take photos and write with Austin Underground of TSTV, and I love creating media with local zines. In my free time, I like to cook, play pickleball, and have picnics with friends.
