23. AM- Arctic Monkeys (2013)

By 2013 Arctic Monkeys had already been around for awhile. At this point it had already been 7 years since their gigantic debut album (one that I already wrote about my love of here as the first blog I posted to this site), they’d already worked with Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme on a record, and had redefined themselves on every album they’d made to this point. On 2013’s AM, Arctic Monkeys made their case for being one of the biggest bands in the world and crushed it. The hits on this record were inescapable. “R U Mine”, “Do I Wanna Know?” and “Why You Only Call Me When I am High” were all huge at the time, played in every college dorm room in the world, and can still be heard regularly on alternative radio. After this record Arctic Monkey’s took a radical left turn on their next album Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino, a much more subdued piano based record that sounds meant to be heard in a casino lounge. But, on AM Arctic Monkeys made their biggest, most ubiquitous album yet and the kind that provide the soundtrack to a particular place and time for a generation.