Tag Archives: blur

#1286: Blur – Stereotypes

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Up until The Great Escape in 1995, it was the trend that whatever the first song on a Blur album was had already been released as the first single in advance. ‘She’s So High’ for Leisure, ‘For Tomorrow’ on Modern Life Is Rubbish, and ‘Girls & Boys’ on Parklife. ‘Stereotypes’, although being the opener on The Great Escape when that came around in the autumn of 1995, bucked that trend. It was the main contender to be the lead representative, but then ‘Country House’ – the second tune on the record – was chosen instead. We all know how that went down. Nah, instead, ‘Stereotypes’ was released as the album’s third single in February ’96. But for the crazy successful year 1994 to 1995 was for Blur, ‘Stereotypes’ is a pretty perfect way to open an album released amidst the madness, with its frantic synthesizers and stabbing guitar chords.

I came across the track myself pretty much the same way I got to know all the other Blur singles. Through seeing their music videos on the television. Although it wasn’t on MTV2. I distinctly remember seeing it on Q, if anyone remembers that channel. Blur videos were usually playing on the telly, and this was during a time when the band weren’t even together. ‘Stereotypes’ was one of those live performance montage music videos you usually get when a band’s on the road and don’t have time for those two-day video shoots. Nothing like their cooler, cinematic videos, but the song sounded very, very nice. When I was 11/12, I was mostly into the songs I saw on TV, and so compilations were my usual request for gifts for older bands whose videos were frequently played. Blur’s 2000 Best Of didn’t have ‘Stereotypes’ on there, unfortunately. I have the feeling I knew this before owning it. I still got the comp anyway. But I downloaded ‘Stereotypes’ on its own a while afterwards.

The song’s kinda strange in that it’s about the activities of swingers, “wife-swapping” as it’s explicitly referred to in the lyrics. Damon Albarn sings about a woman who gets a little frisky with another man while her husband is away, having their way with each other in different locations of the house and in full view of the neighbours. The ‘stereotypes’ that there must be more to life than are the usual doting wife and adoring husband that I guess you would usually find in a faithful marriage. Albarn tells us to live a little, bring in another couple and get a bit freaky to spice things up. Graham Coxon’s guitar playing is a highlight. It’s kinda buried in the mix, but when you pick it out, you can hear how it sounds like he’s attacking those strings. A very rough sound to those chords, you gotta love it. Some websites last the line of the song as ‘You should go on another bender/Before you come to offend her’, which is a little menacing to say the least. I think Albarn sings ‘before you come to an end, uhhhh’, meaning “before you die”. I like how the song slows in tempo while that line’s being sung too. ‘Stereotypes’ is a bit of a forgotten single. Doesn’t help that the band don’t look on The Great Escape with the highest of regards. It’ll be a long time before they play it live again, is what I’m saying. I don’t think it’s too bad.

#1275: Blur – Star Shaped

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When it comes to Blur’s ‘Star Shaped’, I have vivid memories of being in my room during my first year of university and listening to it repeatedly, air drumming to Dave Rowntree’s performance many times. The summer prior, I’d listened through the band’s whole discography and downloaded all their LPs to my laptop. According to my ‘Chemical World’ post, I did all of that in one weekend. It was a lot of music to take in. I think I revisited Modern Life Is Rubbish at some point during the first semester of uni, and ‘Star Shaped’ just jumped out as an immediate favourite. While the band were making Modern Life… they were told by their label that they didn’t have any singles on there. Damon Albarn went off and wrote ‘For Tomorrow’ in response. But listening to ‘Star Shaped’ all this time, I always thought of it as an obvious single contender.

The track is the thoughts of a narrator just doing the things he can that’ll help them get through the week. They wash with a new soap, which apparently helps keep a good mental health going. They can’t help but get to the office late, even attempting to show their face when the weather outside isn’t very good. And they have a few drinks with mates at the weekend to maintain that strong bond of friendship. The narrator works hard on keeping up appearances, but inside they know this focus on work can’t be too great in their actual development as a person. But the cheery backing vocals tell the narrator it’s all good and that the work they’re doing now will eventually pay off. They’re star shaped. They’ve got potential. A little bit of an existential crisis thing going on in this track. But you wouldn’t know it because the music’s so upbeat and packs a heck of a punch.

Gotta say, I like almost everything about this song. Damon Albarn’s got that youthful tone in his voice, which always worked wonders in that particular era of Blur, and it’s one of the few that I can think of in the band’s catalogue where he goes back and forth on the vocals with Graham Coxon, who provides the chirpy backing during the choruses. Coxon’s guitar work’s impeccable, filling in spaces with little runs and licks here and there to make things a little more engaging. Dave Rowntree’s drum performance plays a huge part in my enjoyment of the track. May not seem incredibly special to some, but they have a massive presence that provides an extra edge. And a lovely part is when things get a little quiet for the horn interlude by composer Kate St John, who also plays during the song’s floating waltz-time outro. Ah, so much to latch on to in the three-and-a-half minutes this track lasts for. One of my favourites from that whole ‘Life’ trilogy.

#1246: Blur – Song 2

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Going into this, I was really thinking, “Wouldn’t it be funny if I just typed ‘Woo-hoo’ for the post and nothing else?” A little part of me still wants to as I type this. But I reckon it would be a bit of a cop out if I did. I would have been two years of age when Blur’s ‘Song 2’ up and around as the second single from the band’s self-titled album from 1997. And as a result, I think I really missed how inescapable the song was during its heyday. But even when I first saw the video/heard the song in 2005 or something, it sounded like a tune I must have heard a hundred times before. It’s Blur’s most well-known song, even by people who don’t know who the band is, and to this day if you were to see the band live, ‘Song 2’ is a guaranteed play because I don’t think they’re allowed to leave the stage without performing it.

The story that people tend to agree upon with the song is that it was written to parody American grunge music, with the whole soft verse/loud chorus with the lyrics that make no sense thing going on. The real story is Damon Albarn originally had the track demoed in a slower, acoustic arrangement with the “woo-hoos” originally being wolf-whistles. Something quite similar to this, actually. Graham Coxon heard it, suggested to mess it up and make it nastier. And so, Albarn laid the vocal track in the control room while Coxon, bassist Alex James and drummer Dave Rowntree rocked out in the live space. The placeholder lyrics Albarn originally ended up as the final thing. He had actual lyrics he wanted to lay down, but they didn’t seem right. The guide vocal track which was meant to be recorded over stuck too. And made as a joke to freak out the label representatives, the joke fell flat because the people at the label ended up loving it and backed its potential as an actual single.

I must have heard this tune over a few hundred times now, surely. And you know, it’s a repetitive, sure. It’s got the “woohoo” thing going on. The lyrics are a bunch of nonsense. It’s over before you even realize. But I swear, every time the band comes in on that first “woohoo” with the riff and the double-tracked bass, it’s an automatic screwed face on my part. I just can’t help it. This a great song, just in terms of the feel of it all. Sometimes you do want to shout melodically about the most random of things, and ‘Song 2’ is the prime example that allows you to do that without thinking too much about it. Sometimes I think it’d be nice for a lot of other Blur songs to have at least half of the popularity ‘Song 2’ does. They’ve got some nice songs to their name. But then I think, if it’s gonna be one, why not ‘Song 2’? What it doesn’t have in substance, it makes up for in feel and attitude. And that’s all right with me.

#1238: Blur – Some Glad Morning

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I was only talking about a Blur song the other day. How I came to know today’s Blur is very similar to the backstory behind ‘So You’ too. Blur’s discography was remastered in 2012. At least a majority of it. I went through all the Special Editions. Eventually came round to the expanded version of Think Tank, the band’s album from 2003. And that’s where ‘Some Glad Morning’ can be found. The song was recorded during the sessions for the LP, early on too before Graham Coxon left the band in acrimonious circumstances, but was left on the shelf until it got its own limited, fan-club exclusive release in 2005. By that point, the band was considered to be over and done while Damon Albarn was doing all his business with Gorillaz.

I think this goes down as one of those Blur songs where, if you look up the lyrics for them online, none of the sites that have them will be correct in any shape or form. It’s another Albarn-sung composition where the singer kinda merges his words together, delivering the vocal with a sort of tired, worn out drawl. Immediately catchy, though. The song has no chorus, revolving more around a ghostly refrain of ‘You’re behind me’ that repeats after nearly every line, but each verse that comes around follow the same melody. Once you’ve got it down, it’ll pop in your head from time to time. ‘Some Glad Morning’ isn’t really about anything. Again, I think it’s a case of Albarn messing around with words to go with the music and succeeding with very good results. Sometimes I wish he’d go back to that type of writing style. Not that I don’t like the Albarn-related music of recent years, but it’s the vague lyrics-aren’t-as-important style songs that always got me. Maybe ’cause of the mystery.

I appreciate the sort of loopy aspect of this song too. The track consists of little riffs and licks that you can tell were probably only played once or twice in a run-through and then copied and pasted wherever appropriate using some kind of software. Same applies with that “You’re behiiiind me” vocal. As it was recorded during a time when Albarn had the first Gorillaz album under his belt, you could guess that maybe he applied some recording techniques from the sessions with the project. There is a bit of a kooky Gorillaz feel about it. But the woozy bass lines and unique guitar chord choices could only ever tell you that it’s a Blur track through and through. I like Think Tank as an album myself, but it gets a lot of flak for not sounding like Blur enough due to the absence of Graham Coxon. A song like ‘Some Glad Morning’ gives a little insight into how things could have been had he stuck around.

#1234: Blur – So You

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In 2012, Blur released a massive boxset to celebrate their 21st anniversary as a band. In it, you would get (almost) all of their albums remastered. With each album came a bonus disc compiling B-sides and other additional material from the respective eras. ‘So You’ can be found on the “Special Edition” of 13, explaining why you see that album’s cover in the video up top. Originally it was released as a B-side to ‘No Distance Left to Run’ when that song was released as the album’s final single in November 1999. But I didn’t know of its existence until summer 2013 when I went through Blur’s discography on a whim. Heard it then, it’s been on the iPhone ever since.

What we’ve got going on here is a Blur track with a groove. Alternating between C minor and B major chords for the majority of the song, Graham Coxon lays an ascending/descending riff over the top, Dave Rowntree puts down a drum take that feels a little late on the beat with fills that sound like boxes falling down the stairs. All very tastefully done. The lyrics on show go into a category that Damon Albarn started to explore in this particular era of Blur. And that was to come up with lyrics that they don’t seem to mean anything and are more or less words made to match the feel of the music rather than tell a story or detail any personal feelings. A bit of a predecessor to what was to come with Gorillaz, I guess you could say. There are two verses of these “abstract” lyrics, followed by a melodica solo that echoes as each note plays, and the hypnotizing groove continues on until the energy fizzles out and we’re left with studio chatter to close the track out.

If you ever wanted to see Blur working on a song in the studio, you’re in luck. The making of ‘So You’ was captured in an edition of British arts TV series The South Bank Show in which the band were the main focus. The whole episode is worth watching if you’re a fan. But luckily someone on YouTube clipped out the parts showing the band rehearsing and recording ‘So You’, so I’ll just go ahead and embed that at the bottom there. So interesting to see the song’s transformation. What starts off as a discussion of chord progressions and initial showing of ideas swiftly goes on to be this fully formed thing where all the band members are locked in together. It probably happened over a longer period than the six minutes the video lasts for. But it’s still cool to witness.