During a recent conversation with Mojo, Matt Helders rejected the idea of a calculated ‘master plan’ in MySpace popularity while discussing the band’s debut album, ‘Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not.’
Back in 2005, their friends made copies to distribute on buses, and they shared the music on file-sharing sites and created a MySpace page. By the time the media noticed, fans were already exchanging unauthorized recordings and discussions on Arctic Monkeys’ fan forums. Helders recalled that period with the following words:
“Much like when the internet stuff took off for us, it wasn’t this master plan or a stroke of genius. Writing about what we knew seemed like the natural thing to do. We were all into American hip-hop at the time, and that’s what the American rappers we were listening to would do. We had other influences like The Smiths and Elvis Costello, so fortunately, we didn’t go too much in that direction and end up being a really terrible nu-metal band.”
Detailing their connection to the MySpace fuss at the time, he continued:
“We had nothing to do with the whole MySpace thing; a friend of ours just stuck ripped the MP3 and stuck them up on this site. We had no clue. People talked about us making it outside of the music industry, but we just thought that’s how you did it. We didn’t know anyone else in a band.”
When asked about their internet popularity in a 2007 chat with Dave Park, the band members replied,again from a similar perspective:
“No, no. The other day someone said to us, ‘I looked at your profile on MySpace.’ I said, ‘I don’t even know what MySpace is.’ [When we went number one in England], we were on the news and radio about how MySpace has helped us. But that’s just the perfect example of someone who doesn’t know what the f*ck they’re talking about. We actually had no idea what [MySpace] was.”
Arctic Monkeys completed their first album in January 2006 at Chapel Studios in Lincolnshire with British producer Jim Abbiss. It quickly became the fastest-selling debut album in UK chart history, selling 363,735 copies in the first week.