Blur: Classic Or Dud

*and

I think it was just stuff with food that would freak me out

Bizarrely apt, given that they were on Food Records don'tcha think!? :D

Shouldn't have put Mandrax flakes on the trifle...

Quoting notorious sexist cock, Alex James, in defence of your sexist statement is really NAGL.

Being a band of that stature requires attracting a lot of casual fans, some of whom may like Take That, or other equally non-cool bands beloved by teenage boys, but when it's only the female ones that get singled out for derision, that's sexist crap and the kind of thing I've spent 20 years on the Internet fighting. Knock it off.

There were a load of blokes that bought and sang along to "Parklife" while being in pubs with their mates and that, but when it was "Great Escape" vs "Morning Glory" they left Blur for Oasis and never went back. And didn't buy "Be here now" because they already had Wonderwall and didn't need another one.

xpost

Well, no. Because it's true: their audience was full of teenage girls at that point, and teenage girls that weren't necessarily into music. Granted, some of them may have turned into SERIOUS MUSIC FANS (I don't wish to tar ALL teenage girls with the same brush here), but for a lot of them Blur may as well have been Take That.

Remember that wisecrack Alex James made to Q Magazine around the time of the Great Escape tour?

"What's 50 ft. long, has no pubic hair and goes 'ahhhhhhh'? The front row of a Blu

but, Turricgan, Blur WERE at the level of Take That. They scored loads of top tens in England. They Were Cute.

Bizarrely apt, given that they were on Food Records don'tcha think!? :D

As a Smash Hits reader I knew the name of their label, it was all too much for my fragile eggshell mind

xxxpost to White Chocolate Cheesecake:

Indeed, that's what I was getting at; and yes, the audience does include teenage boys too. Was I singling teenage girls out for derision? Hardly, since I distinctly recall writing above (and you'll recall it too if you scroll up and look), that I wasn't tarring all teenage girls with the same brush. It was sharing an observation of how big Blur were at that time, you know nothing about my personal beliefs and attitudes towards gender equality, and nevertheless, it does remain fact that Blur's audience at that particular time was full of them ;)

Anyhow, it would seem like SOMEONE on the internet is spoiling for a fight; in which case, WHO should knock WHAT off?

tl;dr? Lighten up.

here we goooooooo

their audience was full of teenage girls at that point, and teenage girls that weren't necessarily into music.

c'mon dude, this is condescending

There were a load of blokes that bought and sang along to "Parklife" while being in pubs with their mates and that, but when it was "Great Escape" vs "Morning Glory" they left Blur for Oasis and never went back. And didn't buy "Be here now" because they already had Wonderwall and didn't need another one.

― Mark G, Tuesday, September 11, 2012 9:54 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Didn't Be Here Now sell something like 600,000 copies in its first week, though? I'd say a lot of people who weren't necessarily SERIOUS MUSIC FANS went out and bought it!

c'mon dude, this is condescending

― stop swearing and start windmilling (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, September 11, 2012 10:10 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

All that has needed to have been said on this matter has been said. Moving on...

Bizarrely apt, given that they were on Food Records don'tcha think!? :D

As a Smash Hits reader I knew the name of their label, it was all too much for my fragile eggshell mind

― Supper's Burnt (PaulTMA), Tuesday, September 11, 2012 10:02 PM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Hahahaha!!!

Blur took off heaps late in Aus. I remember being stoked to find Parklife in a cut-out bin for $10, in 1994 ffs.

(CDs were easily $25-30 back then)

When did they start taking off in Aus? Around the time of Blur/'Song 2' or even later than that ('Coffee & TV')??

"full of them"

Song 2 went berserk here (iirc Great Escape picked up some momentum, though I can't think why or off the back of which song)

so yeah, commercially it was Song 2

Ah, I had a feeling it would have been 'Song 2'!

Which incidentally is one of the few Blur songs I could actually say that I'm utterly sick of.

I came for the good looks as a teenage girl, stayed for the badass music.

I had my iPod on shuffle the other day while cleaning and Hollywood Lives (? Come rescue, rescue me..) by Suede came on and I was happy my husband wasnt around to mock them. I still enjoy the occasional tune from time to time, but I get embarrassed trying to convince friends to listen to them in the year 2012. Sorry, Suedeheads. I have been lovingly busting out the Blur box on weekends of late. Look Inside America with that scratchy vinyl sound... So lovely.

i love blur but damon's lyrics legit embarrass me on look inside america

"drink pepsi, good for en ARR gy" - lol, line does not work dude

i think hes a naturally talented writer of melodies and tunes but has to struggle hard with lyrics, esp verses, and sometimes just gives up

Haha yes, definitely. I haven't really tried to foist blur on anyone either - but the music & vocal delivery goes down a little easier. The lyrics were not always perfect but the vibe was usually well done.

yeah they def kicked ass at vibe

Hmm. That awkwardness always sounded quite deliberate to me. Def one of the things I dig about his vocals!

it was kind of formative for me listening to blur when i was young, its the first time i remember thinking about a band i liked "wow, i wouldnt have let that lyric pass"

xpost its obv deliberate, doesnt make it a good lyric!

well, it ain't poetry, but...it's elevated by the performance and melody to me! :)

Well, it's like "Bad Head", the song/tune/etc is all fine, but by verse two he's just repeating verse one with some of the words switched round, and ends with getting "a touch of flu", I think "Damon, why did you bother? Oh yeah, that's right, you didn't!"

Beery slurs

now life's a

Blur

I completely agree that lyrics aren't Damon's strong point. For me the most fascinating aspect of his songwriting is the way that he manages to weld catchy melodies to unorthodox chord progressions. I think, overall, his keyboard playing is the most underrated thing about him in the sense that I very rarely hear it being talked about - the aforementioned 'Badhead', for example, and the harpsichord on 'Clover Over Dover'...

agreed

When the first LP came out I had a job writing ad copy for an American music mag - and they gave me a tranche of Damon's lyrics as if they were GREAT ART, to help me write the Blur-b. MegaLOLs shared with the boyfriend at the time about the Geeeenius of Damon as I declaimed lyrics down the phone in 'grade school teacher recites poetry' voice.

Please more britpop era salacious gossip and hearsay. Wife and I getting much lols from stories about Damon being a tit.

Re: the aforementioned "drink pepsi" line - that line has always rankled with me, and it annoys me further that it happens so early on, during the mood-setting intro bit of the song. However I do genuinely like the Annie Hall bit later on.

And if Suzy is talking about Leisure there, yeah, his lyrics were epically bad on that. Here's a quote from Select's big song-by-song Blur feature from '95:

In 12 songs, the word "you" appeared 82 times; he used "day"/"say"/"play" rhymes on a shameless 35 occasions.

And of course, there's "Kazoo, kazoo, you are mine / Why do you turn your back on me?"

The first time I listened to Leisure I got one of the worst horrible splitting headaches I've ever had in my life, and I blame it at least in part on the lyrics.

hes gotten miles better at fitting his words into nice-sounding lines. in fact, i would say hes now good at it. i always found it weird that he tended to be better at it with choruses than verses. no one has ever been worse at it than the manics imo

Best lyrical moment on "Leisure," courtesy "Slow Down":

"Aaaaa...aaaa...aaaaaaahhh
Ooooo....ooo....ooooooo"

Admittedly that was always during the part of the song where I assumed they were parodying Ride, which seemed spot on.

haha i never mind lalas or oohs. im a huge ride fan also

I don't mind Leisure's lyrics so much because he's so obviously not trying.

Turrican OTM about Albarn's keyboard work. As a young enthusiast I'd boggle at his credits -- the range of them.

i find it really really interesting that damon and brett had this (perhaps one-sided) half subtextual half explicit fight going over who was more gay? it kind of blows my mind. "i'm gayer than brett anderson" as a brag from the lead singer of one of the most popular bands in the world. totally just generic old macho one-upmanship, but interesting that that's the form it took

I felt, in retrospect, all of the Suede album was about Justine going off with Damon and Brett doing a "yeah, he's so pretty might fancy him myself" winding-up..

so did Brett ever experiment with men or were his claims part of his shtick?

he described himself as "a bisexual who's never had a homosexual experience" bitd iirc

yeah that's what I'm referring to

so did Brett ever experiment with men or were his claims part of his shtick?

If the Love & Poison book is anything to go by it's a resounding no.

I have that MM issue around where he said that, I should dig it up.

tbh always got the impression that brett's "bisexuality" was similar to girls who 'lez up' in front of dudes but aren't actually remotely lesbian. brett always seemed attracted to playing with most pedestrian ideas of congression (cf having junkie chic models in their early videos) which is why they've been mostly zzzzz to me

on a related note, saw bernard suede in my local supermarket a few weeks ago, he has a very brett haircut