Here it is, one of the worst Blur songs the band ever did. Or so you may have been led to believe. Allegedly, when it comes to ‘Turn It Up’, the second-last song on Modern Life Is Rubbish, the one thing agreed amongst Damon Albarn, Graham Coxon, Alex James and Dave Rowntree is the hate they have for it. There’s no interview confirming this consensus (that I can find). But you can at least find an one with Albarn in which he says, “[Young and Lovely] should have been on the LP. But it didn’t get on there and fucking ‘Turn It Up’ did.” I’ve got a good grasp of the English language to know that any noun prefaced by an intensifier of ‘fucking’ is not being referred to in a good way. ‘Turn It Up’ is a bit of an odd one on Modern Life… It doesn’t fit with the British social commentary theme that runs through the LP. It does feel a little like something that would have been a shoo-in on the previous, debut album Leisure. Judging by the following linked performance, it was one of the first new songs written after that album’s release. But I want to assure you, as a fan of music of all kinds, but predominantly rock as you could tell from everything else on this blog, ‘Turn It Up’ is a great, great time.

In terms of the lyrical content, ‘Turn It Up’ doesn’t really go anywhere and it doesn’t mean anything. “Kazoo, kazoo, you are mine / Kazoo, kazoo, every time”, “Kazoo, kazoo, your reply / Why do you turn your back on me?”. All a bunch of nonsense. Probably an added reason as to why Albarn in particular does not care for the track in any way. Despite this, he sings every lyric within very nicely, alongside Coxon on the higher harmonies. There are great melodies throughout. And the production behind it all is absolutely massive. Mega. There’s an explosiveness to the band’s performance than there has any right to be on a song like this. I’d had Modern Life Is Rubbish in the iTunes library since 2013, but it was a revisit a couple years later that really turned me on to ‘Turn It Up’. The revisit made me pay more attention to the chord changes, the track’s different sections and the various guitar licks Graham Coxon was pulling off throughout. It pricked my ear towards the thunderous drum work by Dave Rowntree, he’s going all over the place, rapid-fire snare rolls and tom-tom strikes abound. Just made me gain a general appreciation for the track I didn’t have before. Even as a “lesser” track, it’s one of the reasons Modern Life… is my favourite of the three “Life” albums Blur did in the mid-’90s.

Graham Coxon once broke down Modern Life…, listening to each individual track and picking out elements a little harder to hear than the average listener may want to. The flickering guitar at the beginning was created by Coxon leaning his guitar against an amp and feeding it through a tremolo pedal. There’s a rattling triangle somewhere in the mix. I think it’s the high frequency of that which adds the trance-inducing quality in the “Kazoo, kazoo” pre-choruses. And the little guitar run he executes before the first pre-chorus is filtered through a wah-wah pedal. The breakdown is a good watch. I’ve kind of run out of things to say here. Sure, ‘Turn It Up’ doesn’t have anything of huge consequence in terms of a narrative, nor in terms of its placement on the album. It’s stuck in that slot in the track list when you’re gearing up for the ending and waiting in anticipation to see how the package finishes. It feels like it’s one of those “we wrote this and our label really likes it, but we don’t” kind of songs. A lot of side-eyeing in this track’s direction. But what it lacks for in importance, it more than makes up for in its intense energy and forceful performance.