10 Greatest Arctic Monkeys Songs
5. Old Yellow Bricks
This is a tale of brutal reality hitting you in the face at 100 miles an hour. Alex Turner introduces us to a character hellbent on escaping their seemingly boring and mundane lifestyle. She's a fugitive but she doesn't know what she's running from. Just from one lyric we are told that this person is looking to get away but has no sense of belonging or perspective either.
The song is a narrative in the purest sense of the word as well. The beginning has our character desperately trying to get away, but by the end she realises she wants to 'sleep in a city that never wakes up'. She realises how good she had it back home and revels in its comfort. She then punctuates this by saying 'Dorothy was right though', referencing The Wizard of Oz and the famous 'There's no place like home' quote.
Old Yellow Bricks is a beautifully relatable tale of misplaced teenage angst and is one of the most concise and captivating narratives Alex Turner has ever spun.