In this song, our hero is trying to impress a female club-goer with his cheesy pickup lines, including the title (which is reminiscent of a line in the disco movie classic
Saturday Night Fever: "Are you as good in bed as you are on the dancefloor?"). The lyrics, "Your name isn't Rio, but I don't care for sand" are a reference to the Duran Duran song "
Rio," where Rio "dances in the sand," and another attempt to win her affections that apparently fails.
"I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor" was the Arctic Monkeys' first single. The band had already built a following, so it was no surprise when it shot to the top of the singles chart in their native UK.
They started garnering attention in 2004 when their demo tapes circulated on various streaming services. Record companies came calling, but they rejected the big labels, signing instead with the independent Domino Records. By the time "Dancefloor" was released, there was already lots of anticipation for it in the UK, and listeners liked what they heard. So did music journalists, enraptured by these young, idealistic upstarts who were part of a rock revival. When the song was released none of the band members were older than 20.
The lyrics, "Dancing like a robot from 1984" refer to John McClure, a friend of Arctic Monkeys frontman Alex Turner who was known for his questionable dance moves. The robot is a breakdancing move popular in the '80s but ill advised in modern times unless you're really good.
Turner and McClure were in a band together called Judan Suki, which formed in 2001. Not long after, Turner formed The Arctic Monkeys. The two later became flatmates and John McClure achieved his own chart success in the UK with his band Reverend And The Makers.
The music video looks like video footage of the band performing on a low-budget TV show from decades earlier. In an interview with Prefix magazine, the Arctic Monkeys explained the story behind it: "We had a program in England called The Old Grey Whistle Test, from the '70s and '80s. It was a live show that a lot of great bands played on. We all liked watching the program from DVD and then we just tried to recreate that. We were going to do it full-on and get the guy who used to introduce bands in the beginning, and go for that sort of thing - so that it looked like a British, '70s music show - use the same cameras they used to use and whatnot, go for an old look."
Whatever People Say That I Am, That's What I'm Not sold 365,735 copies in the UK its first week of release, setting a record for a debut album (the previous record of 306,631 was held by Hear'Say). It sold more than the rest of the Top 20 combined.
In November 2007 The X Factor winner Leona Lewis' debut album, Spirit, sold 375,872 copies in its first week, claiming the record.
Alex Turner recalled the genesis of the song to NME: "It all came from that drum thing at the beginning," he said. "I guess it was some exercise that (Matt Helder's) seen somewhere."
The album won the prestigious 2006 Mercury Prize for Album of the Year. The NME, Time magazine and the Q Awards all honored it as album of the year.
The downside to being on an independent label is a lack of promotion in other countries. The song went gangbusters in the UK, but in the rest of the world most people didn't know about it. In America it peaked at #118.
Guitarist Jamie Cook spoke to Q magazine March 2008 about the album title: "I think it's a lot about (the band's home city) Sheffield - right honest people and that. And I think people respect that. But the funny thing is we got a bit of hammering on our internet forums about the title."
Arctic Monkeys performed the song during the London 2012 Olympic Games opening ceremony. As a result, it returned to the UK singles chart in the week after the event.
Arctic Monkeys recorded a single in 2018 titled "
Four Out of Five." During an interview with BBC Radio 2 following that song's release, vocalist Alex Turner and drummer Matt Helders were asked to use their out-of-five rating system on their own songs. While "
Brianstorm" got a five-out-of-five rating due to its popularity with the band's friends, "I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor" earned a four-out-of-five rating, with Helders criticizing the track's snare drum sound as too "cranked."
