It takes a lot of vision to craft an upward trajectory from a high starting point like that. The band even defeated the dreaded sophomore slump when its second album, Favourite Worst Nightmare, won the same award the following year. It’s also regarded as one of the greatest debut albums in history - no surprise that it won Best British Album in 2007 at the Brit Awards.

In 2006, Arctic Monkeys released its debut album Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, which became the fastest-selling debut album in the history of the UK music charts. In 2005, it recorded and self-released an EP called Five Minutes With Arctic Monkeys, which led the band to sign with Domino Recording Company. Its popularity began to grow across northern England, even gaining the attention of the BBC. It gave the songs away on burned CDs at shows, which fans quickly began to file-share with one another. Over the course of 2003, the band demoed 18 songs - a collection that would eventually be dubbed Beneath the Boardwalk. Jamie Cook soon came on board as a second guitarist - it was he who came up with the name “Arctic Monkeys.” Turner soon got past his reluctance to be the band’s lead singer, and on June 13, 2003, the group played its first-ever gig at The Grapes in Sheffield. School friends Alex Turner, Matt Helders, and Andy Nicholson formed the band in 2002 as an instrumental-only project.

The Arctic Monkeys experienced an unusual rise to fame. This might be because the way the band arranges its songs always stems from the same DNA source, or because Turner’s vocals are like nothing else on the scene. While this type of ambition doesn’t always land well with critics when other bands attempt it, with Arctic Monkeys it always seems to work. Its discography spans from indie rock to hip hop to garage grunge. Famously unwilling to sit still and commit to any one sound, the Arctic Monkeys’ genre varies from album to album.

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