'Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not'

The Artic Monkeys had so much potential for me personally. They burst on the scene at a time that I was diving headfirst into all kinds of new music.

Plus, the Monkeys were a British band with a supposed tackle box full of hooks and angles that made everyone want to sing along and dance.

I did not sing along or dance. I listened and I was not hooked. I think it's boring and boorish. Just four dudes banging on their instruments with little preciseness and care to truly bring out the beauty in their version of Brit-rock. There's little attention to detail to their music and their lyrics, which make no sense and when they do, it's about dancing. Only dance bands should write songs about dancing.

The Artic Monkeys are even a dumb name for a band. Essentially, they got together and tried to follow a formula, which has largely worked on a crapload of people. If you adopt some garage rock ethos with distorted guitars, a lead singer is slightly good looking and aloof, and pen some lyrics that are ambiguous, rhyme and end at each stanza with some clever wordplay, then you can get famous.

However, there's value in this album in terms of the entire history of music. The Artic Monkeys and their first album, Whatever People Say I Am ..., was recorded as demos without being signed by a record label.

Then they made the smartest, industry-rattling move ever: They gave it away.

They gave it away at shows and concerts. They put it on MySpace and gave it all away. Fans shared it with friends. Those friends shared it with more friends. It wasn't word of mouth. It was word of .mp3.

That move made them more famous than actually putting out good music. Really brilliant, and lucky, when you think about it.