10 2000s Albums That Are Practically Flawless
5. Whatever People Say I Am - Arctic Monkeys
Right as rock was starting to get a little too radio-tastic for its own good, the ground floor of the genre was seeing somewhat of a renaissance. As the Pitchfork crowd was just starting to grow up, you had bands that were taking the old tropes of the '70s and redefining them for a new generation, from the garage rock of The White Stripes to the sleaziness of The Strokes' Is This It. If you wanted something that truly captured the spirit of the early '00s, you actually had to venture across the pond.
Looking to join the scene alongside acts like the Strokes, the Arctic Monkeys got to the top of English charts through the primitive file sharing websites of the time. Taking to MySpace, songs like Fake Tales of San Francisco and I Bet You Look Good On the Dancefloor were already monster hits before they had even made the finished versions yet.
By the time we got the album in front of us, this was a dense look at just how dark the English nightlife could become on the rough sides of town, like the tale of a girl turning tricks on When the Sun Goes Down or the slowdown of Riot Van. Compared to the rest of the scene, this is the kind of album that showed us what the '00s were capable of. One minute you'd be playing on the Boardwalk, and soon you'd be headlining Glastonbury.