Arctic Monkeys: 10 Hidden Song Meanings
4. Watching A Lot Of Spaghetti Westerns
An insight into the genius mind of a composer Alex Turner has reportedly claimed to have been "watching a few Westerns" while writing the lyrics for their fourth album, Suck It And See. His words in "All My Own Stunts":
I've been watching cowboy films on gloomy afternoons.
Sometimes his mysterious lyrics are actually far more on-the-nose than you imagined. "All My Own Stunts" has the trudging, ominous beat that evokes images of a slow motion scene in an action movie. It's his ode to cinema and likely inspired by his time on an actual movie set, Richard Ayoade's Submarine.
Not the only track on the album inspired by cowboys; he also recalled to NME that "Black Treacle", one of the most nostalgic songs on the album, was inspired by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Lines like "do you walk the walk or catch the train" and "I feel like the Sundance kid behind a synthesiser" back this up.
Where Whatever People Say I Am highlighted their raucous youth and Humbug was inspired by their time in the Mojave Desert - maybe Suck It and See was written on a lazy afternoon watching Clint Eastwood movies.