Fans of the indie rock legends Arctic Monkeys are wondering what the meaning is behind one of their very best songs. Though the band may be best remembered for songs like 'Do I Wanna Know?', 'Teddy Picker', and 'D is for Dangerous', the band's most recent albums have heard them shed the indie rock scene.
Instead, the group are focusing on an art-rock sound which has split listeners. Even then, both Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino and The Car feature some of the band's very best songs. One in particular has left Reddit users scratching their heads as they try and figure out one of the band's biggest and best songs from this new period.
One user took to the r/ArcticMonkeys subreddit and asked: "What's 'Star Treatment' about exactly? I'm genuinely confused, like the line 'I'm a big name in deep space, ask your mates.' What does space refer to here exactly? And what's the purpose of this 'tranquility base hotel' anyway?"
Fans believe they have found the answer to what the meaning of 'Star Treatment' is – with one user sharing their read on the song.
They wrote: "My interpretation of the song is that it’s about how the version of Alex that everyone sees (the ‘star’), isn’t actually how the real Alex is.
"The key line is ‘that isn’t how they look tonight, it took the light forever to get to your eyes’, which is again drawing a comparison between how when we look at stars in the night sky.
"We don’t actually see how they really look tonight, we see an image from many years ago because the process of the light reaching our eyes takes so long.
"This similarly could be compared to how the version of Alex we see is warped and doesn’t represent the real him, this is the ‘star treatment’."
The user added it was a "theme throughout the album" – and other users have agreed with this read on the song. Some have since branded 'Star Treatment' the "first track of a concept album".
They added: "I think a lot of the song’s purpose is to establish the theme. It describes the setting and mood of the album to come (i.e. space, science fiction, the problems with technology consuming modern culture, etc.)
"More literally, the song is about fame being not all it’s cracked up to be. The narrator just wanted to be one of The Strokes, but now look what’s happened.
"I think the best line to highlight this is 'as we gaze skyward, ain’t it dark early?' To me, this line is saying 'we had all these aspirations to be famous, but wow there’s a negative side to all of this stuff we didn’t see coming'."
Despite all the debate, a third user has suggested the song is not as deep as others have suggested.
They wrote: "Not sure how deep or not deep it is but I think Turner's just making his usual cheeky commentary here, this time about how we’ve reached a point culturally where appearances have become more important than true substance."
