Who came up with the title of Arctic Monkeys' debut album?

20 January 2026, 16:57 | Updated: 23 January 2026, 16:51

Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not is the title of the debut album from Arctic Monkeys, but where did that phrase come from? And why did the Monkeys pick that line?

John Kennedy turns back the clock to January 2006, when he was joined by Alex Turner and Matt Helders to talk through Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not in full! Listen on Global Player here.

On 23rd January 2006, Arctic Monkeys released their debut album, Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not. Riding high off the success of their Number 1 single I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor, the LP also shot to the top in the UK and critics hailed frontman Alex Turner as one of the best new songwriting talents in the country.

The title of the album seemed to sum up the swagger and the confidence of Turner - opening the video to I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor, Turner muttered: “Don’t believe the hype”.

"It's something that we'd overlooked a bit, really, a title," Alex Turner told Radio X's John Kennedy on the release of the album back in January 2006. As the record's projected release date began to loom, the band started to stress about giving it a name. Until one evening, the Monkeys were watching one of the DVDs that Domino Records boss Lawrence Bell had given them.

"They kind of give us a load of DVDs just to keep us sweet," Turner recalled. We were watching this film and there was just this bit, it was the way he said it. The way he delivered that line sounded right. It sounded right smart."

Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not is a line from the 1960 film Saturday Night Sunday Morning and is spoken by actor Albert Finney, who died in 2019 aged 82.

Based on a 1958 novel by Alan Sillitoe, the story tells the tale of Arthur Seaton, a man who works at the local factory, while drinking hard at the weekends and carrying on with various women.

At one point, Seaton launches into a diatribe against people who claim to have got the measure of him.

He rants: “I’m me and nobody else. 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.”

The line is slightly different in the original novel, as Seaton rails in his head against authority figures: "What am I? he wondered. A six-foot pit-prop that wants a pint of ale. That's what I am.... I'm me and nobody else; and whatever people think I am or say I am, that's what I'm not, because they don't know a bloody thing about me."

Sillitoe's stories of working class culture in the stifling atmosphere of the late 50s and early 60s were reflected in Alex Turner's lyrics about Sheffield nightlife in the 21st Century. In fact, many of the tales on the Arctic Monkeys LP were taken from his own experiences in Yorkshire clubs.

Turned told John Kennedy in January 2006: "I liked the idea that it was from the film Saturday Night And Sunday Morning, because that's what the album was as well... [the songs] went from Saturday night to Sunday morning. It felt like it applied to us in a way because people were writing stuff about us - not necessarily bad - but I thought 'Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not' was a good way to get out of it."

But Arctic Monkeys weren’t the only band to be influenced by the film Saturday Night Sunday Morning: the classic Smiths song There Is A Light That Never Goes Out also makes a reference to the script as one of Arthur’s conquests claims: "I want to go where there's life and there's people”.

More on Arctic Monkeys

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• What are Arctic Monkeys' biggest songs?
• The story of Arctic Monkeys' When The Sun Goes Down
• Watch Arctic Monkeys' epic acoustic version of Do I Wanna Know?