Every Pop Culture Reference in the Lyrics of Arctic Monkeys

This article is a tribute to Alex Turner and the Arctic Monkeys who have a predilection to pepper their lyrics with delicious little pop culture morsels for Easter Egg hunters like you or I. The lyrics in the below list are in no particular order (other than being loosely chronological) and I’ve stuck to direct references to specific characters, films, literature, songs etc. leaving out the more general mention of brand names and also non-specific fantasy stuff like ‘vampires' and 'witches.’

Here’s a handful of Turner’s brand name mentions for those interested: Converse, Vans, Smirnoff Ice, Tropical Reef, Topshop, Ford Mondeo, Tabasco, Mecca Dauber, Thermos Flask, Letraset, Black Treacle, Laserquest, Cadillac, Coke (and Mexican Coke of course?!), Lacoste.

Honourable mention: Turner’s reference to a girl needing to “press the star after she’s pressed unlock” in The View From The Afternoon. Not a specific brand or pop culture reference but the notion of needing to press those two buttons on your phone to access a text message could well be an alien concept to a younger generation!

“Your name isn’t Rio, but I don’t care for sand.”

I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor

A nod here to Duran Duran’s 1982 single Rio whose eponymous character ‘dances on the sand.’

“Oh, there ain’t no love, no Montagues or Capulets.”

I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor

A reference to William Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet whose warring families would never allow their romance.

Chun-Li’s Spinning Bird Kick

This instrumental number is named after the Street Fighter character and her signature attack move.

“There might be tellys in the back of the seats in front but Rodney and Del won’t do. Although it might take your mind off the aches and the pains, laugh when he falls through the bar.”

Despair In The Departure Lounge

Not even the characters from Only Fools & Horses and one of their most known and funniest scenes can get the character in this song completely out of his depressive slump.

“And it don’t take no Sherlock Holmes to see it’s a little different around here.”

A Certain Romance

Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective is easy shorthand these days.

“I’m so tense and never tenser, could all go a bit Frank Spencer.”

You Probably Couldn’t See For The Lights But You Were Staring Straight At Me

The Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em character is another byword for foolishness and being awkward.

“And I’ve seen him with girls of the night, and he told Roxanne to put on her red light.”

When The Sun Goes Down

A mention here to The Police song Roxanne, the subject of which is a prostitute.

“Houdini, love you don’t know what you’re running away from.”

Old Yellow Bricks

The famous magician and escapologist Harry Houdini is mentioned here in this tale of someone wanting to get as far away from home life as possible.

“I know I said he wants to sleep in the city that never wakes up, but Dorothy was right though.”

Old Yellow Bricks

Continuing on the theme of the song, the mention of The Wizard Of Oz character Dorothy and her immortal line: ‘There’s no place like home.’

“He couldn’t wait to get away, and I bet that Juliet was just the icing on the cake.”

Only Ones Who Know

Another mention of the Shakespeare play Romeo & Juliet and using it as shorthand for the archetypal dream romance.

“007 and Brucey Wayne.”

Da Frame 2R

A mention to the two famous lotharios and playboys in this song about a predatory figure.

“I feel like The Sundance Kid behind a synthesiser.”

Black Treacle

A mention here to one of the titular characters from Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid.

“Do the Macarena in the Devil’s lair.”

Don’t Sit Down ‘Cause I’ve Moved Your Chair

In this song Turner runs through an increasingly bizarre list of things you should do rather than sitting down, including this reference to the 90’s dance song by Los Del Rio.

“You look like you’ve been for breakfast at the Heartbreak Hotel.”

Piledriver Waltz

This Suck It And See track (taken from Turner’s soundtrack to the Richard Ayoade film Submarine) presents Elvis Presley’s Heartbreak Hotel as a literal establishment to evoke sadness and depression.

“Blue Moon girls from once upon a Shangri-La.”

Suck It And See

Always taken this to reference music from the 1950’s and 1960’s: Blue Moon (most famously performed by The Marcels and the adopted anthem of Manchester City FC) and the girl group The Shangri-Las although this is also a phrase used in other songs.

“I’m a puppet on a string, Tracy Island.”

R U Mine?

Two mentions here to the classic Thunderbirds TV show.

“Come to find you four in Some Velvet Morning.”

R U Mine?

A reference here to the Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra song Some Velvet Morning from 1967.

“She’s got a Barbarella silver swimsuit.”

Arabella

The titular character from the 1968 film is a bit of an iconic character and the alluring costume is mentioned here to assist in describing the appeal of Arabella.

“Leave me listening to The Stones, 2000 Light Years From Home.”

I Want It All

The Rolling Stones have a song titled 2000 Light Years From Home on their 1967 album Their Satanic Majesties Request.

“Like the beginning of Mean Streets you could Be My Baby.”

Knee Socks

The song that plays at the beginning of Martin Scorsese’s 1973 film Mean Streets? The Ronettes' 1963 cover of Be My Baby of course.

“I saw this coming from the start, the Shake, Rattle and Roll.”

One For The Road

Another reference to early rock n’ roll with this nod to the song made most famous by Bill Haley & His Comets but originally recorded by Big Joe Turner and also covered by Elvis Presley.

“If that watch don’t continue to swing or the fat lady fancies having a sing.”

Snap Out Of It

Not strictly a pop culture reference this but one of many examples of Turner twisting a famous phrase or saying to sound better in lyric form (see also “fill in a circular hole with a peg that’s square” from Don’t Sit Down ‘Cause I’ve Moved Your Chair amongst others.) ‘It ain’t over ‘til the fat lady sings’ is said to have come from opera sopranos.

“Open sesame”

“Don’t you know the train keeps a-rolling?”

Stop The World I Wanna Get Off With You

Couple of phrases that are pretty common now and, therefore, the song is more likely using turns of phrase than referencing specifics but ‘open sesame’ is from Ali Baba & The Forty Thieves and The Train Kept A-Rollin’ is another rock n’ roll song covered most notably by The Yardbirds and Aerosmith. The title itself is a spin on Stop The World – I Want To Get Off but again more likely a funny turn of phrase than specific reference.

“You got your H.P. Lovecraft, your Edgar Allan Poe. You got your unkind of ravens and your murder of crows."

“Catty eyelashes and your Dracula cape.”

“I saw you driving your Prius and even that was Munster Koach-esque.”

“You watch Italian horror and you listen to the scores.”

You’re So Dark

Plenty of brilliant dark and gothic references in one of my personal favourite Monkeys B-Sides at play here. This brilliant tale of a guy chasing an ‘alternative girl’ figure includes references to the horror authors Lovecraft and Poe (with the Raven mention surely no coincidence), Dracula, The Munsters TV show and Italian horror soundtracks (most likely the films of Dario Argento such as Suspiria and its celebrated score by the band Goblin.)

“Well, the times are slowly changing.”

“On the back of a transmitter, there’s a shiny little fruit and it’s coming after you. As for Instagram and Twitter, she got caught in both lassos.”

“So, baby, take a walk with me, past flying cars and time machines.”

2013

Little bit of a clunker lyrically this one. A nod to Bob Dylan’s The Times They Are A-Changin’, a none-too-subtle Apple reference, social media and general ‘future stuff.’

“Putting a world to rights with Bing Crosby eyes.”

“Baby, you go hard in the paint.”

“Philanthropic toga party.”

“Metropolis ablaze in the rearview.”

Anyways

Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino is chock-a-block with pop culture nods, inevitable really considering its obsession with our current and future society and sci-fi. The sole B-Side so far released from the album sessions: Anyways is a random odyssey of randomness with the above mentions to the American icon Crosby and Waka Flocka Flame song Hard In Da Paint (or just a general basketball nod.) I’d imagine the 'toga party' lyric refers to National Lampoon’s Animal House and Metropolis is either a reference to the seminal 1927 Fritz Lang film (a sci-fi pioneer) or Superman’s city which is perhaps the more likely given the Batman nods on the album.

“I just wanted to be one of The Strokes.”

“Everybody’s on a barge floating down the endless stream of great TV. 1984. 2019.”

“Jukebox in the corner: Long Hot Summer.”

“What do you mean you’ve never seen Blade Runner?”

Star Treatment

Let’s break these down one-by-one as Star Treatment sets the tone for TBH&C’s poetry and switch-up of lyrical style, more freeform then before. We start off with Turner’s admission that he wanted to be like influencers The Strokes, whose seminal 2001 album Is This It launched the modern era of alternative and ‘indie’ music as we know it.

Moving on, Turner references our modern binge culture and reliance of technology talking the ‘peak era’ of television we’re currently living through and how George Orwell’s 1984 is eerily prescient now.

Pulling into an imaginary bar as he ‘haunts an old flame from the backseat’ he mentions the jukebox is playing Long Hot Summer by The Style Council, Paul Weller’s post-The Jam band with Mick Talbot. He spoke a lot about The Style Council during interviews surrounding The Last Shadow Puppets’ Everything You’ve Come To Expect record, itself a small indicator of the path sonically the Arctic Monkeys would take on this album.

Finally, the ‘film on the wall’ in the aforementioned bar is Ridley Scott’s legendary Blade Runner from 1982. The hugely influential sci-fi flick and its rainy, neon-lit vision of the future is perhaps the look Turner wants you to have when picturing his titular hotel and casino.

“The leader of the free world reminds you of a wrestler wearing tight golden trunks.”

Golden Trunks

None-too-subtle reference to Donald Trump here, a first for the usually apolitical band, but describing him as a Hulk Hogan-esque wrestling figure is absolutely hilarious and bizarrely apt.

“Dressed up in silver and white with Old Grey Whistle Test lights.”

“I’m Mr Bridge and Tunnel on the Starlight Express.”

“Hokey Cokey with the opposite sex.”

“The Information Action Ratio is the place to go.”

Four Out Of Five

Some more obscure references here: The Old Grey Whistle Test was a Top Of The Pops-esque music show broadcast in the 70’s and 80’s on the BBC. It’s also the style the Arctic Monkeys went for on their own BBC live show around the album release.

Mr Bridge and Tunnel is a colloquial term for people who live on the outskirts of NYC and Starlight Express is an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. Perhaps Turner is using the Starlight Express as a fictional name for some sort of transport to the lunar hotel he’s created and how he wants it to attract the well-to-do.

Turner has spoken a fair amount about the ‘information-action ratio’ in interviews and it’s a term coined by Neil Postman in Amusing Ourselves To Death.

“The rise of the machines.”

“Swamp monster with a hard on for connectivity, the ascension of the C.R.E.A.M.”

“In my little mirror mirror on the wall.”

Science Fiction

'Rise of the machines' is probably more about technology infiltrating our lives, like much of TBH&C, but, of course, is also the title of the third Terminator movie.

'Swamp monster' conjures up images of the comic character Swamp Thing and C.R.E.A.M. is a reference to Wu-Tang Clan’s huge 1994 tune.

‘Mirror mirror on the wall’ is, of course, a line from Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs from 1937.

“Wayne Manor, what a memorable NYE.”

“Bukowski!”

She Looks Like Fun

This song puts you in mind of someone idly scrolling through Instagram with its random exclamations of ‘cheeseburger’, ‘snowboarding’ etc. Wayne Manor is Batman’s home whilst Bukowski is Charles Bukowski, a German-American writer and poet.

“I’ll be by the Batphone if you need to get a hold.”

“Vengeance trilogy wallpaper walls.”

Batphone

More Batman references here with the Batphone being part of the Adam West series and, once again, a cool, instantly iconic sci-fi reference. The Vengeance trilogy comprises Sympathy For Mr Vengeance, Oldboy and Lady Vengeance, three films directed by South Korean director Park Chan-wook.