Alex Turner reveals original lyrics for ‘Four Out Of Five’

Alex Turner has been talking about the new Arctic Monkeys album again, and has revealed some of the original lyrics for ‘Four Out Of Five’.

Chatting to Vulture for their ‘How To Write A Great Rock Lyric’ feature, the frontman spoke about his writing process for ‘Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino’ and much more.

“Lyrics usually come to me in the morning, in the first 15 minutes of the day, or when I’m out in the middle of the night,” he begins. “I carry a notebook, and I’ll write a line down in a bar, then maybe the next day I’ll look at it and think, Ah, that’s interesting, I’ll put this in a song. But other times, it just says ‘John Lennon is a TV chef’ or something.”

He then spoke about ‘Four Out Of Five’ and how he got “carried away” during the process of writing the album.

“The lunar surface is what my friends nicknamed the room in my house in L.A. where I was doing all this writing and recording,” he told Vulture, referencing the “lunar surface” lyric in the track’s verse.

“I like the idea that records can sometimes feel like places the listener can go and get lost. And a lot of the chords and music in these songs felt lounge-y in a way that just seemed, to me, to fit on the moon. So then I was in outer space, and I just kept going. Four stars out of five is a bit of a pun, with the stars. I may have gotten a bit carried away there.”

The track begins with the lyrics “Advertise in imaginative ways / Start your free trial today / Come on in, the water’s lovely / Look, you could meet someone you like / During the meteor strike / It is that easy.” Originally, though, the words were “Karaoke and raspberry beret, in imaginative ways, and I get signed right then and there by a hotshot executive / I wasn’t expecting it that easy.”

Alex also spoke about the album’s first line - the now-infamous “I just wanted to be one of The Strokes”, but, as he says, “I realized that it was the truth and that that line was probably right where it needs to be. And there was probably a bit of, like, ‘Oh, you daren’t leave that there.’ So I just left it.”

Watch the band’s video for ‘Four Out Of Five’ below.