Alex Turner’s School of Rock Lyrics

As told to LANE BROWNThis article originally appeared in the August 6, 2018, issue of New York Magazine and on


1. Write Early, or Late


2. Location Matters



Since Turner’s songs are verbally dense, most assume he writes the lyrics before the music, but that’s not always the case, he says. “For me, it’s the sound of the music I write that leads the way and helps suggest the words. The melody is what makes you commit to saying shit. Some people think that writing words just to fit a melodic idea makes those words meaningless, but I think the opposite is true. There’s a line in Leon Russell’s ‘A Song for You,’ one of the greatest songs of all time: ‘If my words don’t come together / Just listen to the melody for my love’s in there hiding.’ That makes a lot of sense to me.”

4. Stick With It, Even If It Takes a While


5. Play With a Band


6.Record Yourself

If you don’t have a band, try GarageBand. “One trick I used to finish the songs on this new album was starting the recording process at home,” Turner says. “I had a piano, drum kit, and a Vox Continental organ. I used an eight-track recorder, a Tascam 388, and I sat with all my instruments and recorded the songs into the machine. That way, I could hear everything at once, whereas in the past it was all in my imagination until I could play the songs with the band. So it wasn’t just an acoustic guitar and a vocal; there was a sound to it that helped keep me inspired and moving through ideas.”

7. Get Carried Away


8. But Not Too Carried Away


9. Write Placeholder Lyrics


10. Give Yourself a Deadline


11.Sometimes Let the Lyrics Write Themselves

At most shows on their current tour, Arctic Monkeys have been performing “Cornerstone,” a song from their 2009 album Humbug in which Turner’s narrator searches a series of pubs for his former lover but finds only look-alikes; three of the four verses end in disaster when he asks his ex’s doppelgängers, “Can I call you her name?” “That song has a neat and tidy story,” says Turner. “I was listening to a lot of country music when I wrote it, and it had that formula where the verses always end the same way. That happens a lot in Patsy Cline tunes. I started with the line ‘I smelt your scent on the sseatbelt’ In reality, I was sitting in the back of a taxi and I got this scent in my nostrils of whomever I was longing for. I may have also had the names of the pubs in mind. Not to sound like a wanker, but with that song, I had an idea and it wrote itself. I’m not sure how I ended up with the girl’s sister in the last verse, though. When I was in school, I think I probably fancied my girlfriend’s sister or something.”

Header image courtesy of the BBC