New British Music Experience Exhibition Explores The Artwork Behind Arctic Monkeys’ Iconic Debut Album
The British Music Experience is set to revisit one of the most defining visual moments in modern British music with Don’t Believe the Hype… Uncovering the Artwork of Arctic Monkeys’ Debut Album, a new temporary exhibition opening in Liverpool this January.
Launching exactly 20 years to the day since the release of Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, the exhibition takes a deep dive into the creation and cultural legacy of one of the most recognisable album covers of the 21st century. While the smoke-filled photobooth image has become iconic in its own right, this exhibition looks beyond the familiar frame to uncover the wider visual world from which it emerged.
At its heart, Don’t Believe the Hype… is an exploration of ordinary moments and lived experience. Rather than presenting the artwork as a carefully engineered branding exercise, the exhibition reframes it as a social document, capturing a specific time, place and generation on the cusp of the attention economy. It paints a portrait of youth culture rooted in shared spaces, waiting around, boredom, anticipation and nights out, the small details that later took on unexpected cultural meaning.
Visitors will be guided through the conceptual journey of Scott Jones, Creative Director for the album, with the exhibition bringing together original photographic material, outtakes, interior imagery and personal artefacts from the period. A distinctive day-in-the-life approach runs throughout, tracing how the cover image, single artwork and accompanying photographic sequences documented a fleeting moment in time with honesty and restraint.
One of the exhibition’s most striking revelations is the first-ever public display of the photograph that directly inspired the album’s now-famous cover image. Seen in its original context, the image offers fresh insight into how something seemingly incidental went on to define an era of British music and visual culture.
Twenty years on, the exhibition also asks why this imagery continues to resonate so strongly. In contrast to today’s algorithm-driven feeds and self-conscious online performance, the artwork emerged from a pre-platform digital culture shaped by peer-to-peer sharing, early social networks and collective discovery. Visibility was communal rather than curated, and authenticity came not from polish but from presence.
“Most album artwork reflects youth culture after the fact,” says Scott Jones. “This was different. The images didn’t try to perform or exaggerate what was happening around them – just document them. The artwork came from ordinary moments, from waiting around, from nights out, from being there. The poetry was already present; the work was in celebrating it.”
That sense of ordinariness is precisely what gives the artwork its lasting power, according to Liz Koravos, Executive Director at the British Music Experience. “This exhibition allows visitors to slow down and look again at an album artwork many people think they already know,” she explains. “By placing the artwork back into its original context – its objects, its moments, its ordinariness – we can better understand why it connected so deeply, and why it still resonates today.”
Koravos also highlights the importance of the album’s specificity, both musically and visually. “The songs are rooted in queue lines, taxi rides, sticky dance floors and half-heard conversations, yet they translate universally,” she says. “What makes the record curatorial gold is that specificity, and we’re excited to mark the anniversary through this temporary exhibition while highlighting the band’s contribution to the history of British rock and pop.”
Running from 23 January to 22 March 2026, Don’t Believe the Hype… Uncovering the Artwork of Arctic Monkeys’ Debut Album offers fans and first-time listeners alike the chance to see a familiar image anew, not as a piece of nostalgia, but as a quietly powerful record of a generation, captured before anyone realised quite how iconic it would become.
Don’t Believe the Hype… Uncovering the Artwork of Arctic Monkeys’ Debut Album
23 January – 22 March 2026
British Music Experience (Cunard Building)
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