Revisiting Blur's eponymous fifth album on its 25th anniversary

Virgin Radio

10 Feb 2022, 11:25

The mid-90s was dominated by Britpop. Blur’s Parklife landed in 1994, as did Definitely Maybe by Oasis. The following year, both bands dropped new LPs: The Great Escape and (What's the Story) Morning Glory?. And it was with the release of singles from these records that Britpop arguably reached saturation point. 

In 1995, Country House battled Roll With It for number one in the UK singles charts. It was Blur vs Oasis, the “Battle of Britpop”, and it was all over the news. 

Fast forward to 1997, and it felt like everyone was ready to move on from Britpop. And so it was that Blur released an album which was a clear stylistic change from the quintessential Britishness of their previous few offerings. In a deliberate step away from their cheeky Cockney tag, and amid reportedly fractious relationships between the four-piece, their eponymous fifth album, Blur, was influenced by American indie rock. Recorded partly in Iceland, and released on this day (10th February) in 1997, it delivered abstract experimentalism and abrasive guitars.

“I wrote Damon a letter before we recorded Blur. I said I wanted to scare people again," guitarist Graham Coxon said. And so, Coxon’s love of lo-fi US indie came to the fore in the creation of the record, while vocalist Damon Albarn started writing in a more personal style, rather than creating characters.

Blur’s intention to distance themselves from Britpop is clearly stated from the off, with sombre, drug-inspired opening track and lead-single, Beetlebum. In the 2010 documentary No Distance Left To Run, Albarn said of the song: “That whole period of a lot of people's lives was fairly muddied by heroin, for a lot of people.”

Despite perhaps not having the obvious, upbeat commercial hook of the likes of Country House or Girls & Boys, the song was a hit, reaching number one in the UK singles chart. The album, too, was massive. It landed at the top of the UK album charts.

However, even though the record sounded the death knell for Britpop, that’s not to say it meant the band had lost their knack of writing an absolute banger of a tune. Indeed, one of the most iconic indie-pop belters of the 90s came from this record. 

The short, raucous Song 2 remains one of the ultimate singalong - or rather, shoutalong - indie anthems to this day, and led to the album becoming the band's most successful LP internationally.

In terms of critical reviews, it was a case of mission accomplished for the album. The BBC wrote: “This was the point when the Britpop dream - which had started to sour on Blur's previous album, The Great Escape - was finally laid to rest.”

Meanwhile, Rolling Stone said: “This is a record that inhabits current American rock biases as cogently and intelligently as Parklife corralled the last few decades of British rock.”

In 2009, Graham Coxon said: “I'm really fond of that record. I think it's one of our best.” 

Two years later, Blur would go on to record their sixth studio album, 13, which continued their journey away from Britpop. By the time the following album, Think Tank, was released in 2003, Coxon had left the group. 

The guitarist would rejoin Blur from some huge live shows in 2009, including a Glastonbury headline performance. In 2015, the band released their first studio album in twelve years, The Magic Whip, which marked the recorded return of Coxon.

Blur have been on hiatus since their Magic Whip tour of the same year, with its members working on other projects. However, frontman Damon Albarn, who is also a core member of Gorillaz, said in 2018 that the door to more music from Blur hasn’t been closed for good. “I'd hate to think I'd never play with those musicians again,” he said.

As recently as this week, Graham Coxon spoke about the prospect of the group getting back together, telling the Rockonteurs podcast: “I actually think that Blur will always be capable of that, and when the time comes around and the stars are aligned, we’ll always be capable of doing something interesting.”