Favourite Worst Nightmare

Favourite Worst Nightmare is Arctic Monkeys' second studio album, and a follow up to the grimy, uncut Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not. The album was an ambitious step forward from their debut, with much cleaner sounds and tighter hooks. The melodies are reminiscent of influences from The Strokes and The Smiths.

Frontman Alex Turner explained the album title during an interview for UNCUT.

This time it’s from a lyric in one of the songs. I’ve been finding it hard to describe, actually. But there’s a lyric in the ’D is for Dangerous' song, and it seemed to tick all the boxes for what we were after in a title. As far as concerns what is your favourite worst nightmare, I think I’d describe it by saying it’s like someone with a gambling addiction – they get something out of it, but they know it’s bad for them. But in the song it’s more to do with… a woman.

In the same interview, he described the recording process:

The recording of the first one was a swift thing, because we had all the songs and the order and everything all planned. We’d also played all of those songs live, and we’d had some of them for a year, even then. With these songs, we hadn’t played the before recording them – we’ve played them at three gigs so far, six of the ones off the record and one B-side.

We spent a bit more time, because we’re a bit more into sounds – there’d be bits, or guitar sounds that we liked, and wanted to do bits like that. The drum sounds we wanted to get sounding really fat. We did a session with [producers] James Ford and Mike Crossley on the last record and got on really well, and wanted to do something else – all year round I was thinking, ‘I want to try with them two…’. They were very involved in getting the sounds.

Favourite Worst Nightmare peaked at #7 on the Billboard 200, about three weeks after its initial release. The LP stayed on the chart for 8 weeks.