Arctic Monkeys - Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not: The stories behind each song

23 January 2026, 08:00 | Updated: 23 January 2026, 16:51

Arctic Monkeys - Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not | X-Posure Album Playback

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.

By Radio X

@RadioX

Listen to the full Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not album playback on Global Player here

On Monday 23rd January 2006, an up-and-coming indie group from Sheffield released their debut studio album. Two members of that band, Alex Turner and Matt Helders, joined Radio X's John Kennedy to talk about every track on the album, which was titled Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not.

We didn’t know it at the time, but that record would go on to become the fastest selling debut album ever in the UK.

The rise of Arctic Monkeys was like nothing the world had ever seen before. The beginning of their music career aligned with the rise of social media sites like MySpace... and not only were they in the right place at the right time, but they had the right music too.

I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor and When The Sun Goes Down both shot straight to the top of the charts after being released as singles from the album.

Just after John played Perhaps Vampires Is A Bit Strong, But..., Alex asked him if he thought anyone would still be listening. Well, 20 years later, we’re still very much here - and we're still listening.

1. The View From The Afternoon

   Alex Turner: "It's my favourite title, I think, that I've ever come up with. But it's exactly that - the sort of anticipation for the evening ahead or whatever. It might not be a night out. It might be anything."

   Matt Helders: "I remember when we first started playing it, we were like, imagine turning on an album and hearing that first? You'd be thinking, what's this? I remember just when we used to practise it, we thought that'd be a good song to start our album with."

   

   Arctic Monkeys - The View From The Afternoon (Official Video)

2. I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor

   Alex Turner: "That's a really old one. That's probably just after I started thinking about, like, writing lyrics. I don't know, something happened. Again, it's reet boring... There was a girl and I fancied her a bit. They're not our best lyrics."

   Matt Helders: "Only by our standards."

   

   Arctic Monkeys - I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor (Official Video)

3. Fake Tales Of San Francisco

   Matt Helders: "It was about a lot of bands that we played with because we were doing a lot of gigs, not just in Sheffield, outside of Sheffield, when we were first starting to play away from home. We were supporting people, people were supporting us. You just saw it all really. Every cliche."

   Alex Turner: "That were on the same demo with Mardy Bum and Certain Romance. I think that it was the end of 2004, perhaps. There was a dispute about whether we were going to leave it on [the album] or not. To be honest, I think it had got forgotten about."

   

   Arctic Monkeys - Fake Tales Of San Francisco (Official Video)

4. Dancing Shoes

   Alex Turner: "That is the oldest. That was definitely in 2004, early on, I imagine. It always a good live one as well. I really like the solo. I think it was one of us first good 'uns. It sort of survived, it just kept in with the theme of the record. People trying to pull, that's what it is."

   Matt Helders: "That was the second demo, I believe. We did our first demos in 2003. I'm still not bored of playing it, which is weird."

   

   Dancing Shoes

5. You Probably Couldn't See for the Lights, But You Were Staring Straight At Me

   Alex Turner: "It's about someone that we met once. It's got nowt to do with like a club or going out or any of that. I think it's more about just like this person that we knew that were in a group. That's where the words sort of came from."

   Matt Helders: "I do get to sing a lot on it though. This was just to be a bit special and have two different things at once. These are all the things that you go for to try and be different. And we all sing as well. That always looks good. We've always said that. When everybody comes up to microphone, it just seems to look like energetic."

   Alex Turner: "We'll be harmonising next."

   

   You Probably Couldn't See For The Lights But You Were Staring Straight At Me

6. Still Take You Home

   Alex Turner: "I remember we were sat somewhere in town once. Me and Cooks, Jamie Cook. And we were just discussing what were going on, discussing our surroundings. I'm not very good at describing these things... I'm a bit disappointed in myself."

   

   Still Take You Home

7. Riot Van

   Alex Turner: "I've never personally been in a riot van."

   Matt Helders: "It's all happened. Whether it's to you or just people you know. It's all fact."

   Alex Turner: "We weren't hoodlums or anything, but I mean, it was sort of things that we saw when we were like a bit younger and that. We're still sort of reminiscing about them times now. It was funny."

   

   Riot Van

8. Red Light Indicates Doors Are Secured

   Alex Turner: "Things like Riot Van are sort of written from memory, about when we were much younger, like fourteen or whatever. But like Red Lights Indicate, those are from now. It's one of the most literal ones. I wouldn't want to do like an album of them. Like it's got quite a lot of words in it and it's just like a stream of consciousness almost. I just think the flow's pretty tight."

   

   Red Light Indicates Doors Are Secured

9. Mardy Bum

   Alex Turner: "My driving instructor got me into The Smiths. He never played them when I was driving because I couldn't concentrate on two things at once. But he lent us a couple of records. I tried to get into them before, but it's one of them that takes a bit of work, almost."

   Matt Helders: "I think that's where I am at now. I'm in the process."

   Alex Turner: "He lent me Hatful Of Hollow and The Smiths. That sort of transformed me. I thought. Oh yeah, this is really, really smart. I think I've listened to them quite a lot since the album was written... you can tell the influence a bit more."

   

   Mardy Bum

10. Perhaps Vampires Is A Bit Strong But...

    Alex Turner: "When we started doing a lot of gigs out of Sheffield, we had Geoff [Barradale], who started managing us. He had an old Saab and we used to all get in his Saab and pack the car up with a few amps or whatever, and then go and play these gigs. People at home, always used to be saying, what are you doing that for? Well, we love doing it and were kind of getting us name about a bit. We were just like going and playing the circuit, I suppose.

    "It was just kind of about them attitudes and how everyone thinks they're an expert on how you get on in bands and that. It was like a reaction to that. I didn't want to just call it Vampires, because it's a bit strong. It is a bit strong. I kind of apologise for it in the title. "

    

    Perhaps Vampires Is A Bit Strong But…

11. When The Sun Goes Down

    Matt Helders: "We never really had a name for it for a long time. We used to just refer to it as 'Scummy' ourselves or 'Scummy Man', at first. But then we realised it weren't just about a scummy man. It were like general scum!"

    Alex Turner: "It didn't seem fair to call the area scummy because it's quite nice in its own way."

    Matt Helders: "It's not scummy in the day. The area it's about is we used to have our practice room and it's on cover of the single. It used to just be like that when we used to come out of practice, we used to see all kinds of things. Before any of us could drive or anything, like back in the day, one of us dads would gi's a lift there. And then they'd be getting propositioned while they're waiting for us. We'd have our instruments in our hands and there'd be these guys coming up to you with carrier bags, saying 'How much are these guitars worth, lads? How much can I get for one of them?' We'd be like, 'Only about a quid. You don't want it'."

    Alex Turner: "You just couldn't understand why there's, like, a bloke walking about with a carrier bag or whatever. That was something that the bloke said when we moved into the room, he said: 'Watch out, lads, it changes when the sun goes down'. He actually said it."

    

    Arctic Monkeys - When The Sun Goes Down (Official Video)

    Alex Turner: "There's a guy called Paul Fraser, who did a film with Shane Meadows called A Room For Romeo Brass. He wrote a script, inspired by the song. And that's what our video's like - from this film that they've made. It's really amazing, they've brought all their own characters into it. It's about the same sort of area to what our song were written about, but he's kind of obviously put his own input or whatever in. It's amazing."

12. From The Ritz To The Rubble

    Alex Turner: "It's sort of kind of the bookend, if the afternoon was the start, then the morning after is the end of it. I think the second half of the record is more kind of where we we're going. We've got quite a lot of new tunes since the album, and they sound like what's on the second half, especially Ritz To The Rubble. I think that opened a bit of a door for us. It sounds a bit more dramatic than a lot of them, in a way."

    

    From The Ritz To The Rubble

13. A Certain Romance

    Alex Turner: "The theme that we went on with the album with the twelve tracks that's kind of separate. [This] is not a specific subject. It's like an overall thing. Like a conclusion. It's kind of reflective, whereas the other ones are a lot more, you know, a lot of them are quite specific."

    Matt Helders: "Sometimes we can tell if there's something we've done when we've gone out that we won't forget because it was that funny or that strange or whatever, then we can all tell that would be a good idea for a song. Another way that we have our input as well is in studio, Al might have two options for line. Like two separate lines and we've got to choose from or something."

    Alex Turner: "Sometimes you can't tell what's rubbish anymore. So who are you going to ask?"

    

    A Certain Romance