This interactive web page tells you the story of how the song catalogue of the Arctic Monkeys changed during their 15+ years of existence.
Read more about how the analysis was developed on
Medium.
An introduction to the Sheffield boys
The Arctic Monkeys are a British rock band formed in Sheffield in 2002.
Known for their distinctive sound and clever lyrics, they quickly rose to prominence in the mid-2000s.
Their debut album Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not (WPSIATWIN) was released in 2006.
It became the fastest-selling debut in UK chart history.
The band, led by vocalist and guitarist Alex Turner, is celebrated for its fusion of indie rock, post-punk, and garage rock influences.
Other members include Jamie Cook on the guitar, Nick O'Malley as bass player, and drummer Matt Helders.
The Monkeys have a devoted fan base and are currently one of the most influential and enduring acts in modern music.
Over the years, they have released seven studio albums, which showcased their evolving musical style.
Click around below to discover the band's albums discography.
Albums discography
Bangers 🎙️
Let's now subject Arctic Monkey's said evolving musical style to the test of data analysis and visualization!
To kick off, here's a visual that shows the median and average song duration in seconds for every album.
This allows already for an interesting first conclusion, namely that songs have considerably increased in length.
Not quite sure if the radio stations (or listener's shortening attention span) are happy with that.
Time to move on to the more interactive part, otherwise I might lose my train of thought...
The importance of common song sections
The structure of a song can be divided into different sections, most commonly intro, verse, chorus, bridge, and outro.
Each section has its own characteristics and importance.
For example, the chorus is often the most important part of a song, as it contains the main message.
The verse guides you through the story, and the bridge is a transition between the verse and chorus.
The intro and outro are the beginning and end of a song.
Songs can also have standalone instrumental sections.
An average song structure, from intro to outro, is represented from bottom to top in the graphs.
An album's perspective first
The verse and the chorus take up the biggest proportions of a song.
Verses became more important in the last two albums.
Instrumental and outro sections have become less prevalent.
Favourite Worst Nightmare
Let's start with the second album for a songwise perspective.
Definitely not all songs have a discernible intro or outro.
The song with the largest outro is If You Were There, Beware, an eclectic one for sure!
Beautiful closer 505 has a good equilibrium.
Suck It and See
Moving on to the fourth album, the balance is different.
Intros are limited, and longer verses are becoming more of a thing.
The chorus remains key for many songs, such as She's Thunderstorms and Love Is a Laserquest.
AM
The fifth album is a prime example of balanced structure.
Almost all songs follow the dosed pattern of a short intro, to-the-point verses, and a Helter Skelter chorus.
No wonder this album shot the band to international fame for good.
The Car
The latest album continues a move away from all albums up to AM.
The emphasis has now strongly shifted to verses.
This shows especially throughout the second half of the record. For instance, Perfect Sense has only verses.
They must be sending a message.
Song structure may change without good reason other than an artist's mood.
The increasing importance of verses, as well as the relevance of the chorus in hit songs, although not big ideas, are striking observations.
Is there a connection between mood and structure?
It probably flows both ways.
How lyrically varied are Alex Turner's texts really
To measure the lyrical variation within a song, a useful metric is the so-called lexical diversity.
This metric is the ratio of the number of unique words versus the total number of words in a song.
Lexical diversity ranges between 0 and 100 percent.
In other words, the higher this value, the more unique a song can be considered.
The dots in the subsequent graph show the
minimum,
median, and
maximum lexical diversity for the given album.
Upward trend
You immediately notice a trend: the median lexical diversity of albums went up.
As songs became longer you'd expect them to have become more repetitive but it turns out that the opposite is true.
Debut lexical diversity
The first album Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not has a low lexical diversity.
About 70% of the words are unique.
WPSIATWIN
The songs are short and punchy.
Night-out classic From the Ritz to the Rubble has a surprisingly low value.
Does this mean such songs are less creative lyrically?
Of course not!
Least unique
Self-titled album AM is the least lyrically diverse.
That should come as no surprise, given the many hits this album produced along with the heavy focus on choruses.
AM
The spread in lexical diversity between songs is fairly elevated on this album.
There's only one song more repetitive than Mad Sounds.
You guessed it: the catchy Brick by Brick from the preceding record Suck It and See.
Most unique
Arctic Monkey's last album The Car is lyrically the most diverse.
The median lexical diversity is very close to the album's maximum, suggesting that at least half of the songs are very unique words-wise.
The Car
Again, songs are comparably longer on this album but the lyrics are not repetitive at all.
Impressive!
Single release Body Paint is the sole exception to the rule.
How lyrically diverse is the songwriting of Alex Turner then?
Increasingly so!
You will find wordplay gems from his early days up until now, but he has become even more creative.
This should keep fans excited about what he'll come up with next.
The beat of romantic words
Romance is without a doubt a theme in many Arctic Monkeys songs.
Alex Turner and words, a love story pur sang.
Yet, do the songs mention love explicitly or is it rather a between-the-lines affair?
Let's find out how regularly a selection of ten romance-laden words such as love, baby, or heart pop up in the songs.
Lexical dispersion shows when and how often words occur in a piece of text.
In our context, you can think of it as a simplified timeline of the words used in a song.
The graphs below will take you through that timeline for the selected romantic words.
Romance, oh romance
The chart on the right shows the count of the respective word in each album.
Love, heart and eyes are the most popular words.
Which album conjured up wonderful romantic vibes the best?
Let's break it down.
The love albums
Though by a slight margin, WPSIATWIN, Suck It and See and AM are frequented most by the ten romantic words.
The word baby looks like a first pick particularly on AM, but we will nuance this a bit later.
Romance != romance
The word romance itself is barely used.
Maybe the point's that there ain't no romance in it?
Who are we to judge.
A Certain Romance might shed more light.
Dispersion by song
A song-by-song timeline of romantic word usage gives a more detailed view.
Aha, the popularity of the word baby is mostly due to its clustered use in Snap Out of It and Knee Socks.
Suck It and See even has a couple of songs that use none of the words.
The best you ever had
The three most popular words leave a trace to dozens of songs.
However, they are sparely used, only between one and three times per song.
Humbug & The Car
We end on a less romantic note, highlighting the two albums superficially not so keen on romance.
These albums actually ooze a more mysterious sentiment, which is a nice antidote.
Of course, a romantic atmosphere is much more subtle than (ten) plain words can ever convey.
We all know that.
For example, love only shows up once in Love Is a Laserquest but lover does four times.
Therefore, take the analysis with a grain of salt.
Still, it's amusing to figure out which albums are more straightforward than others in this regard.
That was it! I hope you enjoyed this little data-based interactive story about the Arctic Monkeys.
There are more aggregated data and visualizations to explore.
If you like this, I would love to share my enthusiasm about the Arctic Monkeys, music, and data analysis with you.
I you have a lesson to teach me, always glad to listen, ready to learn.
You can find my contact details on my website. 💌