Blur is the fifth studio album by the English rock band Blur, released on 10 February 1997 by Food Records. Blur had previously been broadly critical of American popular culture and their previous albums had become associated with the Britpop movement, particularly Parklife, which had helped them become one of Britain's leading pop acts. After their previous album, The Great Escape, the band faced media backlash and relationships between the members became strained.
Under the suggestion of the band's guitarist, Graham Coxon, the band underwent a stylistic change, becoming influenced by American indie rock bands such as Pavement. Recording took place in London as well as in Reykjavík, Iceland. Drummer Dave Rowntree described the music on the album as being more aggressive and emotional than their previous work. Producer Stephen Street claimed that lead singer-songwriter Damon Albarn had started writing about more personal experiences while Coxon revealed that listening to Albarn's lyrics it became clear to him that "he'd obviously gone off his head a bit more".
Despite worries from Blur's label, EMI, and the music press that the change in style would alienate the band's predominantly teenage fanbase and that the album would flop as a result, Blur, as well as lead single, "Beetlebum", reached the top of the UK charts and the album was certified platinum. The album also reached the top 20 in six other countries. The success of "Song 2" led to Blur becoming the band's most successful album in the US where the Britpop scene had been largely unsuccessful. The album received positive reviews from most music critics, many praising the stylistic change as well as Albarn's songwriting. This is the last album to feature longtime producer Stephen Street, until his return for The Magic Whip (2015).
Background
Despite Blur's previous album, The Great Escape, being released to positive reviews, and entering the UK charts at number one, the album's success was left in the shadows compared to (What's the Story) Morning Glory? by Britpop rivals Oasis which went quadruple platinum in the US.Erlewine, Stephen Thomas. "[ 'Country House' song review]". AllMusic. Retrieved on 16 June 2008. Blur became perceived as an "inauthentic middle class pop band" in comparison to the "working class heroes" Oasis, which made lead singer-songwriter Damon Albarn feel "stupid and confused".Live Forever: The Rise and Fall of Brit Pop. Passion Pictures, 2004. Bassist Alex James later summarised, "After being the People's Hero, Damon was the People's Prick for a short period ... basically, he was a loser—very publicly."
An early 1996 Q magazine interview revealed that relations between Blur members had become very strained; journalist Adrian Deevoy wrote that he found them "on the verge of a nervous breakup". Guitarist Graham Coxon, in particular, began to resent his bandmates; James for his playboy lifestyle and Albarn for his control over Blur's musical direction and public image. In February 1996, when Coxon and James were absent for a lip-synced Blur performance broadcast on Italian television, they were replaced by a cardboard cutout and a roadie, respectively. Blur biographer Stuart Maconie later wrote that, at the time, "Blur were sewn together very awkwardly."
Coxon struggled with drinking problems and, in a rejection of the group's former Britpop aesthetic, made a point of listening to noisy American alternative rock bands such as Pavement.Harris, pg. 259–60 In the 2010 documentary on the band, No Distance Left to Run, Coxon stated that he was getting more influenced by American guitarists as "a lot of them were doing very interesting stuff with guitars and I needed to be nourished I suppose as a guitar player and there was none of that happening in English music although English music was now more popular [so] I started listening to more stuff from the States from smaller labels."No Distance Left to Run. Pulse films. 2010
Although he had previously dismissed it, Albarn grew to appreciate Coxon's tastes in lo-fi and underground music, and recognised the need to significantly change Blur's musical direction once again. "I can sit at my piano and write brilliant observational pop songs all day long but you've got to move on", he said. He subsequently approached Street, and argued for a more stripped-down sound on the band's next record. Coxon, recognising his own personal need to, as drummer Dave Rowntree put it, "work this band", wrote a letter to Albarn, describing his desire for their music "to scare people again".
Recording
Recording sessions for the album started in June 1996 at Mayfair studios in London. After the initial sessions, the band left to record the rest of the album in Reykjavík, Iceland, away from the Britpop scene. It was in Iceland that the vocals to "Strange News from Another Star", "Essex Dogs", "Beetlebum", and "On Your Own" were recorded. "We just recorded some vocals there," Albarn revealed in an Addicted to Noise interview. "I have a house there and it's the perfect place to write because of the light [The sun doesn't rise until midday]. Not good during the summer because it's sunshine all the time, 24 hours a day."
Apart from a change in musical style, the band changed the way they recorded. "It was the first time we sort of jammed," Coxon revealed. "We've never really jammed before. We've been quite white-coaty, overall about recording, like in a laboratory. Yeah, we did actually feel our way through just playing whatever came to our minds and editing, which was really exciting." "We just played together for two weeks in a way we hadn't done since 1991," Rowntree recalled. "We wanted to purify the sound, to not have anything there not played by us. We reasoned that if we made small changes at the input end, we could effect large changes in the output." According to producer Stephen Street, "Blur had decided that commercial pressures and writing hit singles wasn't going to be the main consideration any more. The mood in the studio was very different to when I'd first worked with them." "In the studio, once we got past those first few days, where I felt everyone was treading on eggshells, there was a great atmosphere. I think it was because they didn't want to be competing with anyone on this record, they wanted to make a record that would help keep the band together." Street had acquired a new piece of hardware, described as "muso-ish to talk about but really useful" that enabled him to sample loops and otherwise cut-and-paste entire sections of the band's jam sessions.
Music
Rowntree stated that the band decided to give Coxon a much freer hand on Blur. Street also observed a change of Albarn's writing style, as he "was much more prepared to write in the first person, rather than about interesting characters. I think [Albarn had] grown a bit and was prepared to start writing about his own experiences rather than transposing them on to a character like Tracy Jacks or Dan Abnormal." Coxon agreed, and felt "Damon's songs were revealing more to me than to him" and said that when he heard some of his home demos he realised "he'd obviously gone off his head a bit more". The album features the first song to appear on a studio album for which Coxon not only wrote the lyrics, but also sang lead vocal: "You're So Great".
According to Mark Redfern of Under the Radar, Blur eschewed Britpop in favour of American indie rock. NME magazine similarly argued that it favoured lo-fi and alternative rock over Britpop. By contrast, Margaret Moser of The Austin Chronicle characterised its music as "a punchy brand of muscular Brit-pop", while AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine said it "may superficially appear to be a break from tradition", but is a "logical progression" from Britpop, rather than an abandonment of it. In congruence, music critic Jim DeRogatis assessed that the album "introduced elements of American indie rock to the band’s veddy English sound."
Album opener "Beetlebum" has been described as a "Beatles tribute" by several publications; Erlewine wrote that the song "[runs] through the White Album in the space of five minutes." Q magazine's Andrew Collins compared the song to The Auteurs, as well as a "slightly menacing Free as a Bird", due to "a slight drone undulating in the foreground" and a "sweet, elongated coda busied by what sounds like an invasion of turkeys." Albarn admitted that "Beetlebum" was about heroin and the drug experiences he had with his then-girlfriend, Justine Frischmann of Elastica. He also stated that the song describes a complicated emotion, sort of "sleepy" and sort of "sexy".MTV Blurography – Broadcast December 1996 The song's title alludes to the phrase "chasing the beetle", a variation of the phrase, "chasing the dragon", which refers to inhaling the smoke from heated heroin, morphine, or opium that has been placed on a piece of tin-foil. "Song 2" is notable for its hook, which features Albarn yelling "woo-hoo!" The song's intro has been called Coxon's "finest moment".Harry Wylie (August 1997).Top Ten Indie Guitarists Total Guitar. Retrieved 16 December 2011.
Erlewine described "Country Sad Ballad Man" as "bizarrely affecting, strangled lo-fi psychedelia", whilst Collins claimed that "the seated intro is a rustic mess from which arises a simply beautiful, lazy riff." "M.O.R." was described by James Hunter of Rolling Stone as a homage to Mott the Hoople. The song borrows the chord progression from David Bowie's "Boys Keep Swinging" and "Fantastic Voyage", the latter of which was co-written by Brian Eno. "On Your Own" is notable for its usage of a Roland TR-606 Drumatix, a 1980s drum machine. Erlewine described the song as "an incredible slice of singalong pop spiked with winding, fluid guitar and synth eruptions." "There's a terrace singalong in here somewhere", Collins claimed, "undermined by its indistinct drum sound". "Theme from Retro" was described as "obligatory space-rock trip-hop" by The Austin Chronicle, whilst Collins claimed that it "presents Blur in dub", referring to it as "an unyielding, lovely row. Like, say, a Blur B-side." "You're So Great", performed only by Coxon, was described by Collins as "the most American of all", as "[Coxon's] voice—faraway badly recorded, wavering but heartfelt—belongs to anyone but Old Blur." Tom Sinclair of Entertainment Weekly described the song as recalling the "whacked-out plangency of Midwestern lo-fi heroes Guided By Voices".