(Credits: Far Out / NASA / Uwe Conrad)
If you want your debut album to perform well commercially, it’s important to begin building up a fanbase long before release day. Many bands work tirelessly for years to achieve this, spending time and money playing shows up and down the country, working on their social media presence as well as their sound, and firing off emails to labels in the hope of gaining support for recording and releasing their debut. But there is one band who nailed the art of the debut album more than any other.
The 2000s provided us with a new boom of guitar music, with bands like The Strokes and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs emerging in the United States while the Libertines and the Kaiser Chiefs took over the United Kingdom. But perhaps the most important band to rise out of this scene were Sheffield-based rockers Arctic Monkeys, who took the world by storm from the moment they unleashed their debut album.
Like many guitar bands before and after them, Arctic Monkeys spent the first part of the decade honing a fanbase, but they were one of the first bands to use the internet to do so. They shared physical copies of their demos with fans they met on the road, who were so stunned by their sound that they shared it with the masses on the internet.
Although social media is now one of the most popular and accessible ways to find a following for your art, Alex Turner and his band of rockers were one of the first groups to find success via the internet. Eventually, they found themselves working with Domino on their debut album and topping the charts before they had even released a full record.
In 2006, four years into Arctic Monkeys’ existence as a band, they finally graced the world with their debut album, the defiantly titled Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not. The album featured their debut single, the iconic ‘I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor’, as well as iconic tracks like ‘When the Sun Goes Down’ and ‘Fake Tales of San Francisco’.
With a loyal fandom already behind them, both online and offline, Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not was primed for immediate success. After it was released on January 23rd, 2006, those fans flocked to record stores to support the band with their wallets, and the debut record sold hundreds of thousands of copies within its first week on the shelves.
In the process, it became the best-selling debut record within its first week in UK history.
How many copies of Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not did Arctic Monkeys sell in their first week?
One week after Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not was unveiled to the world, the record had sold 363,735 copies, making it the best-selling debut in the band’s home country. Over 100,000 of those sales were made on release day, an impressive feat for a band who were yet to release any full-length material.
In the years that followed, Arctic Monkeys have only built upon that success, topping the charts with almost every single album they have released. The only record that didn’t obtain the number one spot in the UK was 2022’s The Car. Along the way, albums like AM and Humbug have become staples in record collections across the world, Turner has become the blueprint for the modern frontman, and Arctic Monkeys remain just as well-loved now as they were back in 2006.
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