Come together

I am still not quite over that Arctic Monkeys cover. There’s a Beatles and an Arctic Monkeys part to my ~emotions.

The Beatles part is easy. Come Together was the first Beatles song where I “got them”. I didn’t really understand the lyrics (still don’t but I stopped caring) but I finally got why they were considered important and to this day, Come Together is one of my favourite Beatles songs. So like. I’m very happy that the Arctic Monkeys chose a Beatles song I really like and nailed it. (As opposed to Paul McCartney, who butchered his own song.)

The Arctic Monkeys part is more difficult. They were the first band where I witnessed the NME hype and because I was writing my First Ever Uni Paper about the NME’s hype about The Strokes at the time (I stand by the topic but it was so bad) I was very wary of them. Also, these kids were just one year older than me which to me meant I’d have to be at a similar level of success in one year and that stressed me out. (I have similar feelings about Lindsay Lohan and Patrick Bateman. If that sounds unhealthy to you - it is.)

I did listen to them though because they were everywhere and the hype turned out to be deserved. They were really good. Those demos were superb. Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not was not as great as the demos but still really good, I thought because I was a terrible, terrible music snob. And then I saw them live and then Favourite Worst Nightmare came out and they returned looking like Oompa Loompas* and man, that album was great. The last time I saw them was shortly before Humbug was released. Humbug didn’t blow me away and I kind of lost interest in the whole indie rock circus for a while. Suck it and See didn’t register at all with me. I am only now starting to form a real opinion on those latter two albums, separate from my personal feelings on the years they were released in, and in relation to the Arctic Monkeys previous releases. I am quite nostalgic about the years 2005 to 2008, whereas the years 2009 to 2011 were more affected by undiagnosed dysthymia so a lot of the music released in that time has gotten a bit of an unfair treatment by me and I want to change that.

I don’t know why it is important to me to sort this out. But it is.

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* Listen, I know that they did not, technically, look like Oompa Loompas. But it’s what my friends and me decided they looked like so don’t fight me on this. Not a fan of the long hair. Sorry, Kate.