Imagine it. It’s 2007, you’re a young 12-year-old picking up the new Arctic Monkeys album from Woolworths after a day in school. Then you spin around a few times and 18 damn years have passed. It’s maddening putting a number to that amount of time. Woolworths is long gone. World has changed, for the better or worse is up for argument. But Favourite Worst Nightmare is still that 12-song packaged burst of energy created by that young band from Sheffield who made it big only a year prior and were now the indie kings in the country. That album is still my favourite by them. A large, large majority will do a 21-gun salute for Whatever People Say I Am… for understandable reasons. But I’ve always thought Favourite Worst Nightmare is where the band sounded their most tight, in the pocket, and slickest without the carry on they’d incorporate from about AM onwards. Plus, the songs are damn good too.

‘Teddy Picker’ is the second song on Favourite Worst… To tell the truth, I can’t remember how I felt about the song the first time I heard it. It’s sandwiched between opener ‘Brianstorm’, which was released as the exciting, anticipation build-up single and played on the television constantly. Knew it like the back of my hand before I had the CD in my hand. And with third song ‘D Is for Dangerous’ I have a very clear memory of thinking the CD was skipping during a particular moment. I’m sure I thought ‘Teddy Picker’ was just all right initially. But it wouldn’t have been until I’d listened a few more times to really appreciate it. And once you do, it’s pretty hard to forget. It’s got even more listens on ‘Brianstorm’ on Spotify, which I find surprising. But I can I guess why, and I’ll suggest it’s because it sounds pretty damn cool. The riff, Alex Turner in general with that kind of speakerphone effect on his vocal. I think it has some of his best lyrics. The overall tone of it all. I don’t know what producers James Ford and Mike Crossey did to make the track sound so good, but they got the job done.

What’s the song about? It’s about people wanting fame, getting that fame, and not having a great time once that fame’s obtained. A ‘teddy picker’ is a crane game/claw machine, that being the metaphor for grabbing what you want in order to get that success. So there you go. Hope you can listen to the track with new ears if you’d never considered that before. The track was released as the third and final single from the album in December 2007. The music video is of them performing the song live at RAK Studios in Northwest London. As I usually try to put live performances at the end of these, so I that can count in this case. By that time, I’m sure I’d grown to like the song a lot, but I don’t think I ever considered it as a single. But there the video was playing on MTV2. I wasn’t complaining. The single didn’t do as well in the charts as the two that came before it. Hype for the album had certainly died down as 2007 was getting to 2008. The band were doing just fine. It would take a little while for the next album to come, though.