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Arctic Monkeys' Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not Released On This Day In 2006

Arctic Monkeys' Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not Released On This Day In 2006

The album was released on 23 January 2006, meaning it’s now 13 years old

Jess Hardiman

Jess Hardiman

Some albums are so iconic, so memorable, that any time you hear a track from it you're instantly transported back to a completely different time in your life.

For many music fans, whenever they hear Arctic Monkeys' debut album, Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not, they're reminded of cider-stained carpets at house parties, tinnies in the park and indie club nights - the true glory days of our youth, before things like university and bills came along.

The album was released on 23 January 2006, meaning it's now 13 years old. It's aged well though, as many of its songs still surface on radio airwaves or dancefloors regularly - prompting us to shout out the lyrics we'll never forget, like 'Dancing to electro-pop like a robot from 1984 / FROM 1984!'.

Arctics burst on to the scene in 2005 with singles 'I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor' and 'When the Sun Goes Down', but frontman Alex Turner admitted in an interview with NME that much of his material came long before then.

"I've been penning things since school," he said.

"I've been writing for longer than my friends realise. You couldn't be creative at school, could you? You'd have the piss ripped out of you.

"Even when we started the band, lyrics were an area that we were ashamed to talk about and we just wrote bollocks to start with. But I'd always write things down in secret and one day I just thought, 'Fuck It'."

Then let's not forget that album artwork, which famously features a simple, greyscale photo of a guy smoking a cigarette.

The album was released on 23 January 2006.
Domino

That man is Chris McClure, who became friends with the band at 16 after meeting them on the last bus home.

He was studying at uni when he got a call from then-bassist Andy Nicholson, who was after photos of a bloke on a night out to use as the artwork.

"We met the photographer and assistants in a bar at 2pm," Chris told The Guardian.

"I said: 'What do you want us to do?'.

"They said: 'Go out and get drunk - come back after midnight'.

"They gave us a wad of cash, literally hundreds of pounds. We were young and made the most of it.

"When I arrived back it was gone 2am. There was a venue below the bar and we did the pictures there, just me sat on a stool. They gave me more whiskey and I threw up half way through. Everything was blurry."

They didn't tell him it would be for the cover, meaning Chris had absolutely no idea just how famous his face was about to become.

Featured Image Credit: Domino

Topics: Entertainment, arctic monkeys, Music