There's No Other Poll: Let's rank the Blur albums

Almost every album sparked the same contradictory emotions, you admired them, then you wanted to strangle them. It has to be Modern Life for Blue Jeans, don't you think? Out of Time is also damn near perfect.

Some bands I like to name check,
And one of them is BLUR,
Classic songs with a long history
Southern boys just like you and me.
Be-El-You-Are
Flashback to 1991,
Leisure was their first LP
Later on came Modern Life
Mallard art, and titles to match:
Chemical World, Starshaped,
For Tomorrow, Blue Jeans,
Kazoo kazoo you are mine,
Oily Water was my least favourite song,
Oily Water was my least favourite song.

Taken from the Blur tracks poll I did in 2011 - not votes for albums, but aggregating the votes for tracks to the albums they came from:

1. Parklife (2,786)
2. Modern Life Is Rubbish (1,808)
3. Non-album tracks (1,535)
4. Blur (1,491)
5. Great Escape (1,341)
6. Thinktank (1,221)
7. Thirteen (1,174)
8. Leisure (738)

If you swap #1 and #7 the results of the poll may be just about right. As an album Modern Life Is Rubbish is the most cohesive though.

Of course I refer to the aggregated tracks results.

Parklife was always a stronger end-to-end listen compared to Modern Life is Rubbish, which I always felt outstayed its welcome by a few tracks (it seems to fall off a little after 'Oily Water' for me) ... Nowadays, I'm far more likely to listen to Modern Life is Rubbish over Parklife, which feels like it's aged quite badly.

I mean, I don't want to say Parklife sounds dated, but it is strongly evocative of a very specific time which is at odds with now.

I always found Parklife a big drop-off after Modern Life Is Rubbish. Girls & Boys is such a crap song, I found it ridiculous the first time I heard it just when it had come out and the whole album was such a mixed bag and not really holding together.

This is crazy talk afaic - "Girls & Boys" is one of their standout tracks, and Parklife is pretty much their most cohesive album. I do agree with Turrican that it is too much of its time for it to resonate with current tastes, and I doubt I'll have the desire to listen to it again some time soon. (I do in fact think it also sounds "dated", but I've never understood why that's such a pejorative. Revolver sounds dated, Thriller and Bandwagonesque sound dated, "In da Club" sounds dated. So what?)

I'm listening to Think Tank for the first time in years. It could definitely do with editing and there are tracks here that do absolutely nothing ('Jets'?) but also it hold up a lot better than I expected

I'd say Out Of Time is up there with the best of their stuff. Actually, I probably did say that (in that poll more than a decade ago).

Is this the current Blur thread? They have just had a disastrous set at Coachella.

the crowd for blur at coachella was so embarassing damon im so sorry i wasn't there pic.twitter.com/k60LxJj8a7

— nicole (@cupidschok3hold) April 14, 2024

with all due respect (I quite enjoyed the set and Blur in general), it was sort of weird that they were on the main stage

i dont really understand who coachella is supposed to be for?

they have gen z fans aplenty throughout the world but idk if many of them were likely to be at coachella

a happier vid from a few days back

Audience member nails “Parklife” with @blurofficial on 4/10/24 at Fox Theatre in Pomona. #blur pic.twitter.com/rNmXXf7Dmy

— Beaker (@Beakerlives) April 11, 2024

They were the best set that I saw yesterday, don't care how it coma across live. We're talking about it on the Coachella thread while it was happening.