Blur: Classic Or Dud

While they have produced some great pop songs, I would argue that they have failed to created one consistently great album (even the Best Of fell short of the mark). You could probably make a good cd-r worth of their music, but considering the number of albums they have put out that's hardly a glowing endorsement. Modern Life is Rubbish *probably* comes closest, but even that's far too problematic to warrant classic status. Parklife, which is the one that normally gets bandied about when talking about classic albums, is killed by too many little england-isms.

And just like the little girl from nursery rhymes: when they are bad...they are *horrid*. So, so bad that they cancel out the good:

Everything Damon has ever said.

The smug and irritating character songs.

The Country House video.

Bang.

The sad "take us seriously indie kids! We were never serious about wanting fame and fortune!" noodling of the last couple albums.

They *do* change from album to album, trying to anticipate what trends will catch on with the kids like any good marketing student would. This is not a crime; Bowie was great at it during the 70's, Madonna in the 80's and they were both classics. But with Blur it always reeked of desperation a bit too much.

And yet despite all this I do own some of their albums. Go figure.

Not living in the UK, I'm not exposed much to Damon Albarn's alleged bad personality, but his easy-target songs do grate - we get it Damon, you're SO superior to Americans, people who like the US, and middle-class normals. Jerk.

It's also the case that he's obviously quite good at doing pop (cf the Greatest Hits), so when he doesn't do pop but does other things worse you get annoyed.

If that's the case, I think I need some explanation... I mean, I don't dislike the song, in the context of the album it's a cute diversion, but it's SO not a single - just some dork babbling about getting an enormous sense of well-being from something or other, with a blah undistinctive chorus. It's not even silly enough to be a real novelty song. What is the appeal of it ?

If Bowie is taken at all seriously it's because of the startling, inventive things he did with pop in the 70's, not because he's rich - after all Rod Stewart is also rich. BTW what *are* Damon Albarn's extra-pop aspirations (other than sub-Sting do-gooding)?

re 'Parklife':

I can't stand the song, but its mass appeal does boil down to it having a very strong chorus (admittedly a very retro-British one), plus the novelty of Phil Daniels' voiceover.

re Blur in general:

The thing I've always disliked most about them is the air of smugness that seems to pervade everything they do. That and the fact that the chord sequences they use generally don't move me.

"Dear Damon, Please stop with the "la la la" thing. It gets on my last damn nerve. Thanks a bunch.

Sincerely, K"

The Great Escape includes some of their most execrable songs ever along with, frustratingly, two of their best: "The Universal" and "Yuko and Hiro" move me no end. But in retrospect it quite amazes me that that album was hailed at the time as a great leap forward from the parochialism of Parklife; what were all those cheesy little character sketches about, then?

They're essentially a singles band and therefore the Greatest Hits is their best album. At best, they've given us "For Tomorrow", "To The End", "End Of A Century", "The Universal" and, at a pinch, "Beetlebum". I love all the above, though "Tender" always did make me sick. I adore "This Is A Low", and I think "Trouble In The Message Centre" is OK as far as tongue-in-cheek cod-Numan goes, as well. But, in the final analysis, DUD.

Parklife may sound a bit twee now after Britpop exploded everywhere, but the fact that it was SO different in 1994 made it a hit (only #10 though - the biggest hit off the album was Girls & Boys at #5).

I was 14 when Parklife came out. I remember so clearly what the common room stereo was playing beforehand - Nirvana, Lemonheads, Smashing Pumpkins, even Guns 'n' Roses, NOTHING that had any relevance to what was going on with me or anyone I knew.

Parklife is the first new album I really remember having an impact on me; at last, you didn't have to sit in your room and slash your wrists to be cool, you could just go to the park with your mates and feed the pigeons (and sometimes feed the sparrows too). I also believe Girls and Boys is responsible for kickstarting Britpop, as without that disco beat no song had a chance of hitting in 1994, although I suspect something else would have come along anyway (Common People maybe?)

Blur are also really the only band who managed to be political and say it in a popular way (you could perhaps say Pulp and Manics, but I would say Blur are better known outside of the indie scene than those two). It's no surprise that Damon hid himself away during the height of Britpop, seeing as everything he was saying ironically on Parklife had been embraced and celebrated.

It's a shame that they went inside themselves for Blur and 13 and stopped writing about what was going on in the world. We need more bands like early Blur, who write about not only what's happening, but also how to deal with it. My biggest disappointment about Kid A was that Thom doesn't seem to have progressed at all from OK Computer; in fact, he's just withdrawn even more. It feels like we're right back in 1993 again.

I nave nothing good to say about their career up to Parklife, which I half like, but can rarely sit through. 'The Great Escape' sounds oddly clean and dated, yet apart from the whiff of self parody mixed with ripping off the Kinks TOO much ('Charmless Man', for example), it's an album that I still enjoy.

For me it got interesting round about 'Blur' and '13' is, apart from 'Tender is the Night', magnificent. Sure, there's nothing here that hasn't been done before, but the run of tracks 7-13 from 'Battle' to 'Optigan 1' is just plain classic.

So classic it is.

Anyway...reasons for being classic: "For Tomorrow". "Boys & Girls". "This is a Low". "Parklife". "Country House". "To The End". "Tender". Alex James's looks. "Pop Scene". The video for "Song 2", which features Damon being satisfyingly hurled against a wall repeated.

Reasons for being a dud: Damon Albarn.

Hrm.

I stick to my belief that _The Great Escape_ is actually their best album, because they looked like Japan circa 81 or so on the back cover. That's reason enough, really. Then they had to go and record a bad Pixies/Bush rip-off. Dear god in heaven!

As for all the purported greatness of _Modern_/_Parklife_ and its 'trenchant' observations, etc. -- hm. It's just a bunch of XTC songs with "Girls and Boys" standing out as the exception to the rule. And I *love* XTC and all that, I'm just noting that I can't feel too attached to what Blur did with it per se. _English Settlement_ feels younger than _Parklife_ ever will.

Blur's May 1992 show at the Palace in LA was fantastic and the best of the three times I ever saw them; they seem to have gotten steadily worse on that front over the moons. The funniest thing, though, was that when Damon ambled out on stage, his gait, open shirt and haircut made me think of Morrissey. And right after I thought that, about half the people around me started calling out, "Morrissey!" He looked annoyed.

No doubt everyone else spotted this ages ago.

But don't you think that had more to do with Oasis overtaking them in terms of sales and as a cultural phenomena? I sincerely doubt that that Damon would have hid himself away had the Great Escape sold more records than What's the Story (Morning Glory). That's part of what makes Damon so annoying, he tries to cover up Blur's failings with talk of high-minded ideals that don't really exist.*

*I don't really believe that Blur selling less records than Oasis is a failing, but I will bet a dollar to a donut that Damon did at that time.

in 1990 i was nine years old. i haven't ever been to reading, and i don't know who nick grant is. do i look like him, or something?

You're right; I didn't make my point very well. It just seems to me that Parklife has been misinterpreted over the years. Damon's ambiguous criticisms were taken as celebrations, which perhaps explains The Great Escape's more direct approach on songs like He Thought Of Cars, Best Days and The Universal. But who wanted to hear any miserable shit like that in the autumn of '95?

This doesn't make The Great Escape a good album or What's The Story a bad one. I just appreciate Blur's attempt to say a little with their 60s/70s influences, rather than just celebrate them as Oasis do. If they fail to achieve their ambitions, so be it, but I think there's enough worthwhile and enjoyable songs here and there over their albums to justify their existence. The fact that Damon's an idiot doesn't really bother me.

Most of the discussion has centred on 'Parklife'/'Great Escape'. What does anybody else think of 'Blur' and especially '13'?

As for me, a benighted American youth with almost no knowledge of British pop culture beyond a typical obsession with Black Adder, Red Dwarf and Monty Python -- I really like Blur. Their songs sound good to me. I like their (metaphorical) love affair with Syd Barrett, with Pink Floyd or solo. I think all their albums, except for the first (which I've not heard) are quite good, verging on great. "Tender," "It Could Be You," and "Coffee & TV" are particularly sublime, in my estimation.

BTW, what's "pomo" or "po-mo" ?

apart from that: the debut is dog-food, the self-titled fifth is patchy, but with some good tunes. 13 was spoiled by orbit's over-elaborate production. the new one is a step back in the right direction, but not back to their best.

no i haven't just been listening to crap, thanks snarkers.

("13" >>>>>>>>>>>>> "Kid A", obv.)

i wish mr coxon would get back to some of the guitar work he was up to at that point...

Blur are probably the most consistent guitar band of the last decade (or fifteen years, whatever).

The Starshaped DVD had the sound all fucked for the main feature. They never recalled it.

Yeah, a terrible shame, all the music portions are distorted, EMI really fucked it up.

surprise!

New album, The Ballad of Darren, out 21st July 2023.https://t.co/NYFL2LW7On pic.twitter.com/5uh5O5q5yl

— blur (@blurofficial) May 18, 2023

excited to hear if it's somehow even worse than the magic whip

I'm so fuckin excited

The album cover is brilliant btw

post-13 i've only paid attention to anything Albarn-related via singles (mostly gorillaz) but that coachella performance is enough to have me looking forward to this one, and maybe i should check out magic whip

the magic whip has its moments. a few.

It wouldn’t take much for this record to be better than the last one, which was stunningly … I don’t even wanna say bad, it just didn’t register with me at all.

don't believe i ever heard think tank either.

think tank is nearly as good as 13 imo. ppl who hate "jets" be quiet

(I’ll defend TT any day of the week, but acknowledge that I’m very much in the minority there.)

missed opportunity to make a concept album called Tory Cheese Twat

other post-13 albarn worth checking out: good bad queen

don't think I have ever listened to think tank all the way through, but I've listened to the magic whip at least twice. ama.

(didn't bother with think tank because I couldn't stand 'tender' and the song titles looked stupid)

Magic Whip & Think Tank are flippin great

oh tender was on 13. Well I haven't listened to that either.

Interesting to hear them wholeheartedly embrace the full-throated anthemic Britpop sound they've studiously avoided since, like 1999!

Magic Whip & Think Tank are flippin great

correct

13 is a really good album!

13 is a really good album!

correct

I mean Crazy Beat is kinda naff and the sax part of Jets is daft as a brush but otherwise it rules

Still impressed by the audacity of having Damon take over lead guitar duties and it somehow working

13 and Think Tank are phenomenal and two of my favourite albums ever.

Yeah Crazy Beat and that but even so.

think tank is uneven but one of the better blur albums. 13 is still albarn's best work

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Gr8Z3rUeJM

this is thankfully much better than anything on the magic whip which was dreadful. the 2012 singles were pretty good though

I'm surprised the band still generates such enthusiasm tbh. I don't mean it as backhanded snark. I have'em stuck in their 1992-2003 peak and never meet anyone in the wild who mentions the '90s stuff. Hell, last week I downloaded the 2000 comp for walking purposes and ended up skipping way too many songs ("Charmless Man," ugh). My local bookstore plays "Coffee & TV" ad infinitum in this playlist I can tell is called "Eighties/Nineties UK Indie" (Smiths, the Sundays, etc.).

The eponymous album and the slow stuff on 13 ("Caramel") are just about all I need.

Still impressed by the audacity of having Damon take over lead guitar duties and it somehow working

That might be because, CB and File on You aside, it never rocks out - no matter how abrasive Damon's guitar can occasionally get elsewhere. Alex and Dave power the record.

they were always pretty uneven really, a mostly great singles act but most of the albums are messes. 13 was just where they turned all the mess into brilliant noise. "caramel" is their best track

still kinda amazed how prolific albarn is, gorillaz just put out an album a few months ago (which i probably should get around to, the one before it was something of a return to form)

They've all been prolific this year sans Alex - this is the fourth Blur-related new album of the year.

Great news! Can't understand people hating on the Magic Whip at all.

Magic Whip just didn't have any of the playfulness or imagination of their other work. It sounded like "what people who don't really care one way or the other about Blur imagine when they think of Blur"

There are at least a dozen pages on the Hoffman board Blur featuring a certain banned member from here telling everyone else they don't like it

Magic Whip was/is good but in the light of day a lesser Blur record. No bad songs, some great ones, some okay ones. The glow of its 2015 rollout will make me think of it fondly forever though.

It had pretty much nothing which sounded like a 'proper' single like they used to do, which might have been a harder sell for some

it was just tuneless and half-baked. some terrible synth sounds too.

no proper singles yeah, but also nowhere near as compelling as the experimentation of 13 and think tank.

it was limp schlock with a very unfortunate side-order of asian exoticism. only 'go out' and the opener bang. ffs

'no bad song' my brother in britpop 'new world towers' is the second track

some okay ones

my favourite classic-Britpop-band album-release news of the day is that there's a new Electric Soft Parade ftr :D

A silver disc of their first album hangs in a pub not far from me and I cannot remember why.

I'm not sure how excited I am about this, I'm a fan and own a bunch of singles but I don't think I actually liked them that much. They're good but overrated.

i'm just pleasantly surprised that the single is decent enough

Can't help feeling a bit excited about this, but mostly I'm just hoping they keep up their post-Think Tank two-good-songs-per-decade streak, at least. Looking forward to checking out the new song later - the comments here sound promising.

'no bad song' my brother in britpop 'new world towers' is the second track

One of the best songs on the record, wtf?

this new single is absolute dreck imo, truly no songwriting detected

new ESP single otoh is how you *do* a Britpop album preview track

Magic Whip was great. This new song is great. The new album has Gourock Outdoor Pool on the cover. It's all good.

Listening to TMW now. Ahh it's so good. Actually fewer merely 'okay' songs than I'd remembered.

Magic Whip is honestly top 4 and maybe top 3 Blur for me.

Agreed for top 4, would place Think Tank just behind Parklife and MLIR

Update: just loving this new song.