Have you ever gone on casually going about on your daily routine knowing that something big and life changing was on the horizon, but you’re just that person too wrapped up in your own life or what’s happening on the television to realise it? Well, I think that’s what Damon Albarn was thinking about when he was writing the lyrics to “End of a Century”, the third track and last single from the 1994 album “Parklife“.

If I was a little older in 1999 – maybe ten or eleven (around those ages) – I would probably be able to tell you how much people were going crazy for the start of the new millennium. I can’t because I was about four and I can barely remember living in the nineties anyway. The only thing I remember vaguely around the start of 2000 was the “Millennium Bug” where all the electricity was supposed to go out and there would be no more power. Even now, I have no idea what it was about.

While there was obviously a large majority of the world who did care that the world was entering a new era, you can’t say that there weren’t some people existing then who didn’t. Thought it was ‘nothing special’. Saw it just like any other day, and were more interested in carrying on with their lives.

So listen to this track, because it’s coming from a guy who was very much aware of what was going on at that time. Well, six years before anyway.