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Arctic Monkeys · S2 E5
A Certain Romance
The seven-minute anthem that captured a generation's Friday nights
Chapel Studios, Lincolnshire, September 2005. It's the last day of recording and Alex Turner turns to Jim Abbiss: "Let's do this one completely live. Vocals and everything."
Arctic Monkeys, Crying Lightning (2009). Three albums later, Turner's songwriting has evolved from Sheffield kitchen-sink realism to something stranger, darker, and more ambitious. The same storytelling instinct that built A Certain Romance now operates on a completely different scale.
Crying Lightning, Arctic Monkeys (2009)
Crying Lightning is Turner at his most literary: a dense, layered character study of someone who runs hot and cold, wrapped in the heaviest riff the band had written to that point. The guitars grind and sway like a storm building. Josh Homme's influence from producing the Humbug album is everywhere, from the cavernous drum sound to the way the bass sits low and threatening. Listen for how Turner's vocal shifts from whisper to sneer within a single verse, matching the subject's instability.
The Five-Minute Trick
A Certain Romance runs five minutes and thirty-one seconds, the longest track on the debut. It has no chorus. Turner spends the first half cataloguing Sheffield's tracksuit culture: the Reebok Classics, the fighting, the observation that "there's only music so that there's new ringtones." Then, without warning, he flips. The sneering stops and becomes something like gratitude. These are his people.
Sources
Far Out Magazine, 'How A Certain Romance defined a culture'
Paste Magazine, 'Gateways: A Certain Romance'
“A Certain Romance was the last song we recorded. Alex suggested that we do this last song, including his vocal, completely live. We did a run-through of a few bars, then they went for it. It was pin-drop amazing and is what's on the final record. That kind of magic has only happened a few times in my career.”
— Jim Abbiss, producer, PRS for Music (2026)
TAP TO REVEAL: What real event inspired A Certain Romance?
The People's Champion
A Certain Romance was never released as a single. It didn't need to be. Paste Magazine ranked it #2 among all Arctic Monkeys songs, calling it "the people's champion." Rolling Stone put it at #3. Far Out Magazine put it first. An academic paper at the University of Chester used the song title as its own name, studying how Turner's language evolved from Sheffield dialect to something more universal.
Sources
Paste Magazine, '40 Greatest Arctic Monkeys Songs'
Rolling Stone Australia, '30 Best Arctic Monkeys Songs'
Paul J. Flanagan, Language and Literature (2019)
What's unusual about the structure of A Certain Romance?
Only Ones Who Know, Arctic Monkeys
From Favourite Worst Nightmare (2007). A tender, acoustic ballad that shares DNA with the emotional closing section of A Certain Romance. If A Certain Romance is Turner making peace with his world at nineteen, this is Turner at twenty-one, quieter and more uncertain, singing about things only two people understand.
Only Ones Who Know, Arctic Monkeys (2007)
Turner strips everything back to voice and guitar. "In a foreign place, the saving grace was the feeling that it was a heart that he was stealing." One of the quietest songs in their catalogue and one of the most devastating.
Certain Romance Speed Round
The debut album era is over. Two number ones, the fastest-selling debut in British history, and an album closer recorded live in a single take. Next: the Brit Awards, the global tour, and the moment the biggest band in Britain looks at its own lineup and realises something has to change.
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