Big Ideas: A timeless piece or a piece of the time?

No in depth analysis will ever truly reveal the truth behind a work of art. But I sure love to theorize.

Barely scraping at the tone of Alex Turner’s writing, I found there is always that one song that breaks the fourth wall. From Whatever People Say I am That’s What I’m Not to AM, there is one song on each album that gives us a peek into his world, with the exception of Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino, which had three revealing songs, and The Car which I will get to shortly.

Here are the songs from each album:

1. Perhaps Vampire is a Bit Strong, But. 2. If You Were There Beware 3. Secret Door 4. Love is a Laserquest 5. Fireside 6. One Point Perspective, Ultracheese, and She Looks Like Fun.

Although the seventh album, The Car, reads like an autobiography, with There’d Better Be A Mirrorball as a torn page out of his personal diary, I find Big Ideas to be the Holy Grail of self revelations. It is less about him as Alex, and more about him as the front man of a band. And as fan of his music and writing, I find the peek into the latter, thrilling.

Big Ideas strikes me as an ode of personal frustrations towards the duality within him. The fight between artist and entertainer. And in an age of social media celebrities and self-proclaimed musicians selling their integrity as a department store fragrance, there is a profound difference between art and entertainment.

I’ve also expressed in passing comments that the song may have been a reaction to the fans’ reception of TBH&C. I try to avoid conclusions and theories leaning on the parasocial.

When Big Ideas is performed live, his body language tells a different story as well. There’s a sense of mockery in his gestures and I don’t think it’s aimed at us. It’s an internal dialogue of doubt: Do I want to make a timeless piece or a piece of the time?

Personally, I hear two voices in this song. His and the industry’s . Right from the first verse, we have the industry’s voice:

“Well that’s quite a number to sing”. It doesn’t carry a reassuring tone. It’s almost as if he stepped into a verse after performing a new song to a producer and the feedback wasn’t what he expected. This criticism is heard in the response of “can you adapt the theme”, as in “can you change the tune to make it sound more like an Arctic Monkeys record?”

Personally, I believe The Car album is the product of the tone in Big Ideas. We’ve heard him in various interviews admit to not being able to recreate the past and rightfully so. Otherwise he would be reduced to an entertainer relying on style and personality, not an artist true to his evolving craft, creativity in flux.

“The ballad of what could have been”, the familiar and comfortable path he could have stayed on, wouldn’t sound like his earlier work either. And quite frankly, he “can’t remember how they go” anyway, which is evident in the way they perform live variations of their popular songs. The initial reaction he had recording them progressed along with him. Wisdom, maturity, aging, and new experiences reshaped the songs. The vulnerability he exuded in 505 changed immensely.

The idea of an artist creating from an inner calling comes from Wassily Kandinsky’s publication, “Concerning the Spiritual in Art”. He believed artists have “three elements of inner need”:

1. Element of Personality (their own self expression)

2. Element of Style (how their art reflects the trends and the time period they are in)

3. Element of Pure Artistry (creating art for the purpose and cause of art)

This quote by Kandinsky explains it well:

“the greater the part played in a modern work of art by the two elements of style and personality, the better will it be appreciated by people today. But a modern work of art which is full of the third element, will fail to reach the contemporary soul. For many centuries have to pass away before the third element can be received with understanding. But the artist in whose work this third element predominates is the really great artist”.

Earlier I wrote: Do I want to make a timeless piece or a piece of the time? To the new generation of Arctic Monkeys fans and to older ones holding onto nostalgia, The Car doesn’t fit the first two elements. However, Kandinsky would argue that Alex Turner couldn’t achieve pure artistry without fully embodying the first two elements, which the band has. They’ve even challenged their style and personality alluding to a pattern of consistent growth.

Kandinsky writes: “Talk of the coming “style” becomes more frequent daily. But for all their importance today, these questions will have disappeared after a few hundred or thousand years. Only the third element – that of pure artistry – will remain forever. An Egyptian carving speaks to us today more subtly than it did to its chronological contemporaries.”

The Car is a representation of pure artistry. I don’t think it’s fair to tell a person what they can and can’t listen to. Music is subjective. However, it would be a shame to see this album not resonate overtime. It is a pure work of art.

And I close with this quote by Kandinsky that perfectly embodies the spirit of this album:

“The artist must be blind to distinctions between “recognized” or “unrecognized” conventions of form, deaf to the transitory teaching and demands of his particular age. He must watch only the trend of the inner need, and hearken to its words alone. Then he will with safety employ means both sanctioned and forbidden by his contemporaries. All means are sacred which are called for by the inner need. All means are sinful which obscure that inner need.”