On This Day in 2006, Arctic Monkeys Released Their Landmark Debut Album, Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not

On this day in 2006, seminal British indie rockers Arctic Monkeys released their game-changing debut album, Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not. At the time, the album became the fastest-selling British debut LP of all-time and it won the highly-coveted 2006 Mercury Prize.

What began as a Strokes-obsessed group of angsty, pimple-faced teenagers from Sheffield, U.K. turned into a internationally successful band that would influence an entire generation of guitar bands. It’s hard to imagine bands like The Courteeners or The Streets existing if it weren’t for the Monkeys, and there were also plenty of bands that became cheap imitators of their early sound. Lucky for the Monkeys, their sound continued to morph throughout their career, so they’ve remained in a class of their own. Alongside groups like Franz Ferdinand, The Strokes, The Libertines and Interpol, Arctic Monkeys established themselves as one of the defining rock bands of the ’00s and they’ve continued to wow fans and impress critics, most recently with last year’s Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino, which clocked in at #20 on our list of 50 Best Albums of 2018.

Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not was a scrappy affair—spring-loaded guitars, rapid-fire drums and frontman Alex Turner’s 100-mile-an-hour, poetic quips about being an awkward English teenager. Cloaked in Turner’s distinct Yorkshire accent, Turner’s hopeless romantic lyrics were whip-smart, darkly funny and incredibly moving and his evocative vignettes of nights out on the town were equally gripping. Tracks like “I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor,” “You Probably Couldn’t See for the Lights, But You Were Staring Straight at Me” and “When the Sun Goes Down” saw Turner wistfully hoping for a romantic reciprocation and he does so in clever British-isms about dancefloors, taxi ranks, vampires, bouncers, scumbags and “cuddles in the kitchen.”