When The Sun Goes Down
July 22, 2008
There are many reasons I love Arctic Monkeys. The first reason is the fact they’ve put Sheffield and indeed Yorkshire back on the musical map – yeah we do have Kaiser Chiefs and The Cribs and bands like that but we needed a superstar band to make London sit up and listen. Which is exactly what they did – months before they’d released their debut album (which was the fastest selling in British history before Leona stole their title!)
Another reason to love them is the fact they produce tracks like When The Sun Goes Down. Or I could say the fact they produce albums like Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not. Believe me, it was pretty hard to choose a track from the album. I nearly went for Perhaps Vampires Is A Bit Strong But… however as I was listening to it, my Itunes flicked onto When The Sun Goes Down and I remembered why I fell in Love!
The first part of the song is pretty basic. Alex’s voice telling us about a prostitute and the scummy man who wants her. ‘He told Roxanne to put on her red light’ – a cute reference to The Police. Then, and this is where it is amazing (and dangerous) live, the music kicks in. Everyone knows the words to this song. Rhyming summat with stomach – genius, in that it forces southerners to sing in a northern accent!
Another brilliant thing about this song is that it could be about any city in the UK. They all have prostitutes and scummy men to sing about. Whether anyone could do it as poetically as Arctic Monkeys remains to be seen.
