(Credits: Far Out / Domino Records / Chris Boland / www.chrisboland.com)
Sat 13 September 2025 19:30, UK
“Trust the politics to come along , when you were just trying to orbit the sun.” – Alex Turner
As we entered Sunniside things were getting sketchy. Chris Didcot’s panic was causing him to audibly rattle. He was worried that a bystander may have witnessed a group of 14 year olds purchasing the crate of Fosters, reported the illicit lager transaction to the authorities, and now it was only a matter of time before the law caught up with us and sent us to prison. This imagined threat loomed large on his juvenile psyche.
It proved too much for Didcot in the end. He suffered what I am now aware was the first panic attack I had ever witnessed, bolted up Sunniside bank, and sought solace in the first-rate village comforts of Whickham. He has, I am reliably informed by friends who still have Facebook, remained nestled to the bosom of the safe, affluent suburb ever since. We never saw Didcot again.
My lasting image of the boy is seeing his legs race up the bank, somehow at great pace yet also in slow motion much like the staccato tempo of the apt Kate Bush song ‘Running Up That Hill’, and I swear, through an act of metaphysical transition, his tracky-bottoms untucked themselves from his socks before he reached the top. For all I know, he might have been inexplicably wearing chinos by the time he made it to leafy old Oakfield.
For him, the indie boom was over before it had begun. The zeitgeist was the wrong side of the vagabond line for poor old Chrissy D. It was back to combed hair, Match Magazine, and a sober desire to make it as one of the region’s leading estate agents.
(Credits: Far Out / Suzanne Plunkett / Alamy)
This was 2005, and the Arctic Monkeys were proving to be the last of their kind. They had taken hold of a generation in totality. Whether you loved them or loathed them, they were the centre of the Venn by which your cultural preference was measured.
The internet and its macrocosmic mechanisms have since scattered this Venn, precluding the possibility that another new band could possibly be virtually unheard of one week, and fetching record-breaking album sales the next.
“Don’t believe the hype” was a wry wink that the Sheffield lads looked certain to defy back then. Now, 20 years later, it’s a soundbite that haunts modern culture.
But even still, at the time, the Arctic Monkeys represented a pop rarity. They were a particularly sharp spike in the cyclical peak-to-trough five-year transition between nothing happening and the next big thing. Ever since Elvis Presley, this pattern had been a constant, and it seemed to stop with the final boom of ‘I Bet That You Look Good On The Dancefloor’.
After Didcot had departed, that’s the song that the rest of the gang listened to on repeat as we lugged our crate towards the safe haven of a wooded area. In all of our eyes, it was the perfect debut rock ‘n’ roll single. When the pop and fizz of its effervescent arrival had settled, the tea leaves seemed to indicate that they, the Arctic Monkeys, were us, drunken scallies ‘drink-dodging’ the dregs of cans in the bushes, only they were living the dream. No matter how corny that might sound, it seemed important at the time.
To see a group of working class lads rolicking away, riding high on nothing more than a refined expression of unfettered youthfulness was invigorating. Their debut single was as artful as Jay-Jay Okocha’s Match of the Day highlights. And beneath their awkward humility, was the poise and passion of halcyon ambition – an ambition that was thankfully more original than simply one day hoping to drive an Audi TT, which had become oddly prevalent among the young lads around my rough neck of the woods.
Amid the melee of Matt Helders’ adrenalised drums were literary references (no Montagues or Capulets), that seemed to prognosticate our futures. As we drank in the bushes and listened on in awe, our focus might have been on the frenetic energy and fantasies of clubbing courtship, but even then, there seemed to be the distant recognition that maybe in years to come, we too would trade Fosters and frolicking for Vonnegut and Viognier.
It was comforting to know that Alex Turner represented the unfurling depths of our developing characters before even we had fully come to reconcile them ourselves.
That’s quite a lot of weight for one little indie banger to hold, but like an ant that can carry a two litre bottle of White Lightning on its thorax, the song miraculously held its own. So, even to the critics who would often rise above the rigours of a teenage craze, it was worthy of reverence.
Timelessly, it captured youthfulness so fully and with such crisp crunchiness that it even took your auntie Nora back to her days quaffing Babycham behind the back of Oddbins. That’s why I think Didcot ever dared to break character, ruffle his hair, tuck his trackies into his socks, and nip away from his well-to-do mainstay in search of an ‘authentic’ experience of youth. In truth, he was never cut out for it.
He was the first footballer I ever came across to declare himself a ‘number ten’. But something about ‘I Bet…’ had stirred him. Just as it had stirred the nation. In the years since, it has stood up and proven itself worthy of all the accolades thrown upon it in the initial frenzy of its hyped wake.
And there were plenty of bloody accolades. Over the years, Henrik Franzon has collected endless critical data on pretty much every song to ever receive press attention. And his scientific study has crowned ‘I Bet That You Look Good On The Dancefloor’ as Arctic Monkeys’ best song. It also comes out as 2005’s most respected effect, and the 162nd greatest track of all time.
Why does the data science place it so highly? Because if even Didcot was moved by its timeless appeal, then there’s no way critics who were eagerly awaiting the next big thing since The Strokes weren’t going to celebrate its explosive arrival. It was fresh, original, and relatable. It remains that way 20 years on. I bet Didcot even still blasts it every now and again.
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