Arctic Monkeys drummer Matt Helders has revealed that he has a “weird” version of ‘Why’d You Only Call Me When You’re High?’ that has never been released.
In a new interview with Zane Lowe for Apple Music, the musician was reflecting on the band’s 2013 album AM, as part of the channel’s series 100 Best Albums.
“There is a weird version that I’ve got somewhere of ‘Why’d You Only Call Me When You’re High?’ that sounds a bit like ‘R U Mine’,” Helders said. “It is really fun to listen to but it just wouldn’t have worked.”
“I think once [frontman Alex Turner] is done with something, he really has to feel like he can move on to the next thing, because he has given everything to that moment and there’s nothing left after that, I don’t think.”
‘R U Mine’ had been released in early 2012 and saw the band embrace a more raucous, rock-oriented sound. ‘Why’d You Only Call Me When You’re High’, meanwhile, was the album’s third single in August 2013 and showed off a looser, funkier side, with Helders’ drums adding a ‘90s boom bap deep-groove beat.
As Turner told NME in 2013: “It sounds like a Dr. Dre beat, but then we’ve given it an Ike Turner bowl-cut and then we’ve sent it galloping across the desert on a stratocaster”.
AM was the band’s fifth album, partly recorded in the Rancho De La Luna studio in Joshua Tree, California, and it saw them taking in influences from hip-hop, R&B, glam rock and the blues. It is one of the band’s best-selling records and served as their biggest breakthrough on the US charts.
In a 10/10 review from NME at the time, it was described as “absolutely and unarguably the most incredible album of their career” and a record that “might also be the greatest record of the last decade”.
The album went on to be named as the Best Album of the 2010s by NME, where ‘Why’d You Only Call Me When You’re High?’ was labelled as the record’s ‘key track’. “This disparate collection of pilfered genres and stolen sounds came together seamlessly with Turner’s too-clever-by-half lyrics about love, lust and the grey area in-between,” NME wrote.
“It became the soundtrack for countless nights out, hook-ups and comedowns in every town and city of this country. It was the album of the decade.”
Another contributor to AM was Josh Homme, and Helders appeared at a ‘Josh Homme & Friends’ benefit gig in Los Angeles in March, playing on a cover of Gerry Rafferty’s ‘Right Down the Line’.
Helders also ran into Mel C at the Grammys this year, saying that meeting the former Spice Girl made up for the band being “robbed of a Grammy or three”. They went away empty-handed after being nominated for Best Alternative Music Album for ‘The Car’, Best Alternative Music Performance and Best Rock Performance.