SWOONING OVER ALEX TURNER
Over the last five years I've had numerous blogs. And every single time, I have refrained from talking about one particular topic. One very specific topic, to be precise. And that specific topic is none other than Mr Alexander Turner, lead singer of the Arctic Monkeys. You see dear readers, over the last five years, I have resisted that desire to splurge my inner feelings. I have pushed away that overwhelming need to ramble on and on and on. I have turned down the opportunity to gush endlessly. To put it simply, I just adore Alex Turner, and have done for the last five years. In my eyes, there is nobody better than this King of the Yorkshire Dales, creator of bizzare, beautiful, electric, spectacular music, part time poet, sass machine and dare I even say this, but what the heck I'm going to anyway, sex god. Alex Turner floats my boat, rules my world, rocks my socks (wow, very crazy indeed), and I have also wanted to express just why that is so, but something has stopped me every single time. What that very thing may be, I have not a clue. But today is when I say no more. Today, I make a stand. Today is Alex Turner's 30th Birthday, and I feel like if there was any time when writing this very post about Alex Turner would be appropriate, today is that day. Wouldn't you agree? So with that, I apologise in advance for what I am about to do, especially to future me, who would probably inwardly agree with every single word but outwardly be laughing her head off with embarrassment. So with that, here we go.
I didn't even know who Alex Turner was until mid 2011, because I was a massive Jonas Brother fan when the Arctic Monkeys were starting out and making it big, and I didn't really care for anyone or anything else. Jo Bros all the way innit. And once that minor obsession ran it's course, I looked for my musical fix in bands like The Killers, The Kooks, Snow Patrol. Very indie indeed. No-one I knew spoke of the Arctic Monkeys. No-one, as far as I knew, listened to them. So I obliviously carried on with my life, trying out lots of new music and artists, in the hopes of finding that one special artist that stuck. The one that struck a chord, if you'll pardon the pun. Someone to claim that impressive title of favourite artist, which had previously been occupied by the musical greats: S Club 7, McFly, Take That and The Jonas Brothers. I liked lots of different artists very much so, but no-one quite deserving of that special, acclaimed title, and it was a tad frustrating but none the less, I continued my pursuit. The moment that all changed is a moment that I remember very distinctly to this day. I was in year eleven art class, my amazing teacher had been a gem and put the radio on. We were singing along, doing our drawings, chatting away, when this rather peculiar and intriguing song came on the radio. "Suck it and see you never know, sit next to me before I go, jigsaw women with horror movie shoes, be cruel to me, cos I'm a fool for you." And with that, I entered swoonsville, never to emerge from it again. I was caught hook, line and sinker. That soothing, sultry voice, those bizzare yet gorgeous lyrics, those dazzling guitar riffs, that little touch of magic. I had no idea who this band was, or what this song was called, but I suddenly felt like I had caught onto something special. This could be it. This sounded like exactly what I had been waiting to hear, so I strived to hear Fearne Cotton when the song finished, hoping she could put me out of my misery, and when she delivered the artist and song name, like winning a prize from an arcade machine, it felt like I'd finally been given my golden ticket. Arctic Monkeys. Suck It And See. This was it. And all guns were ablaze from there on out.
I instinctively knew at that very moment, that the Arctic Monkeys were exactly what I'd been looking for. This was it. Finally. And I wasn't even sure why, but something about them was just right in a way that nothing else quite was. So as soon as I heard that song, I spent hours listening to their music on You Tube. I looked at their pictures on Google images, and realised that Alex Turner was the most handsome man I'd ever seen in my whole and entire life. I found out they were from Sheffield, 45 minutes up the road. Maybe they sometimes went shopping at Meadowhall too! I went out and bought Suck It And See when it came out, and it's since become one of my favourite albums of all time. I bought copies of Q and NME Magazine because they had interviews with the band in them.Within a few weeks I impulsively bought tickets to their UK tour, and went to see them live only a couple of weeks later. It was one of the best gigs I'd ever been too. At Christmas I asked for all their CD's and I thought they were the best things I'd ever heard. And it all just stemmed from there, and hasn't really diminished since. Arctic Monkeys had officially claimed that prestigious title of favourite artist, and I suspect they always will be my favourite band for as long as I live.
So what about Alex Turner? Where does he come into play here? Where does that massive adoration (that's a bit embarrassing really) come from, cause I'm not really feeling it right now? Well there's a multitude of reasons really, aside from the fact that he's the lead singer of my favourite band. For starters, like I said, I think he's drop dead gorgeous in every single way. His hair is always in some sort of state of perfection, whether that be long and mysterious like in the Humbug days, trimmed and sweeping like back in '07 and 08', or fookin' swoonalicious with that little quiff, like in AM onwards. He has the biggest, brooding brown eyes, the cutest smile, the sassiest pout. His wardrobe decisions, from casual through to evening wear, are always en pointe. I love his ears, his nose, his great footwear choices, his tattoos. And then there's the fact that he has that cracking on stage persona, where he has the crowd in the palm of his hand as he combs his quiff, does kung fu fighting to 'Don't Sit Down Cause I Moved Your Chair', gyrates as he sings, sips a bottle of water, says Happy Birthday to his Mum whilst headlining Glastonbury. You know, all that rock star stuff. There's the fact he's from Sheffield, right next to Derby(!), which was always one of my favourite cities to go up to when growing up, and that South Yorkshire accent with the 'were's and the 'reights' and the extra annunciation on the 't's, which quite literally melts my heart.
There's the fact that had his music career not took off, he would've studied English at the University of Manchester, which is where I ended up too by chance. How he's so witty and funny in interviews, what with that classic Yorkshire dry sense of humour. The little facts about him, that seem to make him even more likeable. The beautiful love letters he wrote to his girlfriends. The range of his voice when he sings, whether that be sultry, smooth, pregnancy inducing, or sassy, witty and matter of fact. His kick ass speech about rock and roll at the Brit Awards, and when the Arctic Monkeys all dressed up in tweed or Wizard of Oz costumes when attending the awards in previous years. How he's proud of where he came from, and what made him who he is. How the Arctic Monkeys are made up of four childhood best friends who all asked for musical instruments on for Christmas one year, and decided to form a band just because, and they're still good friends to this day. How he doesn't take himself too seriously, and still retains such modesty in spite of all the success he's deservingly had. All that stuff, and much more, make him pretty amazing in my eyes. But what I think makes me love, admire and respect Alex Turner as much as I do, is both his song writing, and the person on the other side of that media persona. That very first time I heard Suck It And See, my first exposure to an Arctic Monkey's song, what struck me most was the emotion and beauty of the voice singing, and the sheer breathtaking bizarreness of the lyrics. That's my kind of songwriter. Someone who's doing their own thing, irrespective of everyone else, and doing it so damn well. I'd never heard anyone write like that before, let alone someone who had made it to primetime radio and the mainstream music industry platform. I'm such a sucker for poetic language, intriguing and dazzling word combinations that make you think, or feel something deep within you. I could immerse myself within it forever more. And I always have so much respect for those who are masters at crafting such stunning pieces of language. People who have that way with words. It's like a key to my heart, a passage to my soul, a joy for my brain to decode. I want to see the world the way they do. Find out that secret. Lose myself in the beauty forever more.
Whether he's being witty, bold and introspective, like in earlier Arctic Monkey's albums, or busy establishing himself as a fully fledged modern day musical poet, there's no doubt that Alex Turner is incredibly gifted when it comes to using language. Often people criticize him for the ambiguity of his lyrics, or they don't understand what he's trying to get at, and I'll hold my hands up and say I've not the slightest clue either, but I don't even mind because that ambiguity, that elusiveness, that seemingly bizarre conceptualisation, grammatical encoding, word selection (out comes my inner Speech Therapist!), are the very things I love most of all about Alex Turner's lyrics. In my eyes he is a pure genius. That sturdy, gorgeous, unique, bizarre lyrical backbone and the strongest musical fleshing out to match. And to have the chance to pick his brain about his songwriting process, and his relationship with language, would be an absolute dream come true. To find out why he chooses such words and decides to combine and contort them in that intriguing way, if he's using that language to express an idea or simply because he enjoys forming it in a way that surprises and intrigues people. Do his words have a hidden depth or are they serving a purpose, is he taking the mick or being deadly serious, does he strive for that poetic sound or is it something he can't help doing, does he see the world in technicolour or varying shades of black and white, who inspires him to write like that, and most importantly, does he use thersauras.com to help him out. Alex's lyrical abilities are like his weapon, his power, his gift, the very thing that make him so great and set him apart from all other modern day artists. They're a joy to listen to, they provoke you to think about the world, yourself, with greater depth and introspectiveness, they're masterpieces of the greatest kind, and I love not knowing what to expect from Alex next.
Likewise to write in that kind of way, to see the world in that kind of way, to use your words in that kind of way, you have to firstly be very talented and adept, and secondly, you have to be a somewhat emotionally aware, insightful, introspective, creative, thoughtful individual with a deep, rich heart full of integrity, feeling, meaning. Not just anyone can write like that, and do so as well as Alex Turner does. His lyrics make me laugh. They make me think. They make me dance. They dazzle me. They inspire me. They make me want to be a better writer. They make me feel something. They mean something. And for him to do that, for his lyrics, an externalisation of who he is, to transmit that to the listener, means he has to be a certain kind of person. So when I hear people criticizing Alex for the way he talks, dresses, presents himself, sings, performs, when I see them falling for his persona and not realising that it's just that, a persona, it doesn't half annoy because, irrespective of whether I like him or not, its's clear as day that he isn't the person he leads everybody to believe he is. There's more to him than meets the eye.What you see isn't the truth. There's a real person behind the façade, and he's probably very sweet, nice, a little bit sensitive, sometimes confident, sometime shy, full of interesting observations and insights and quirks, very funny, good to be around, loyal. And the fact that he has those two sides, and that he connects the two together so expertly, that he has a hidden depth, that he retains some privacy, that he's so crazy talented yet so modest too, is something I greatly admire.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that this guy, Alex Turner, is a right legend, a defining figure in my life, one of the musical greats, and I could go on for days and days about why that is so. And maybe you see it too, or maybe you don't. Maybe it's someone else that means all these things to you. Someone else who floats the old boat. Maybe you disagree with me entirely, maybe you agree to some extent. That's okay. We all have people in our lives who mean something significant to us, and I think that's one of the great things about being human, the way we relate to, connect and identify with one another. But for now, my gushing has to come to an end. My soul is content. Life can continue once again. And if you made it this far, thanks for reading, you're amazing and very persistent, it would appear, and to future me, sorry not sorry. You know you love it really!
