Dangerous Animals

Album: Humbug (2009)
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Songfacts®:

  • This is a track from English alternative rock band Arctic Monkeys' third album, Humbug.
  • If there is a recurrent theme on Humbug, it's about chasing a girl, which many fans are suggesting is frontman and chief songwriter Alex Turner's TV presenter girlfriend, Alexa Chung. In which case this hypnotic low-rocker is about Turner's pursuit of Chung, who it appears played hard to get.
  • Eight out of ten tracks on Humbug were produced by Queens of the Stone Age singer-guitarist Josh Homme and on this track Homme also played the castanets. In addition, the American hired help can also be heard singing on this tack, "I'm pinned down by the dark." Turner told Q magazine that Homme "started off singing some vocals to show us some ideas and we'd say, 'That's brilliant. You do it."
  • In an interview with MTV News, Turner compared Josh Homme's working methods with Bill Sykes from Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist. He said: "Josh who takes a bit of a Bill Sykes approach to it. The way Bill Sykes would approach eating an apple - like with a dagger - Josh is like that with the task."

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