Blur are an
English alternative rock band. Formed in London in 1989 as Seymour, the group consists of singer Damon Albarn, guitarist Graham Coxon, bassist Alex James and drummer Dave Rowntree. Blur's debut album Leisure (1991) incorporated the sounds of Madchester and shoegazing.
Following a stylistic change—influenced by English guitar pop groups such as The Kinks, The Who, The Beatles and XTC—Blur
released Modern Life Is Rubbish (1993), Parklife (1994) and The
Great Escape (1995). As a
result, the band helped to popularise the Britpop genre and achieved mass popularity in
the UK, aided by a famous chart battle with rival band Oasis dubbed "The Battle of Britpop".
From
left to right: Alex James, Damon Albarn, Graham Coxon, Dave Rowntree.
1988–1991
Childhood friends Damon Albarn and Graham Coxon met Alex James when they
began studying at London's Goldsmiths
College in 1988. Albarn was in a group named Circus, who were
joined by drummer Dave Rowntree that October. Circus requested the
services of Coxon after the departure of their guitarist. That December Circus
fired two members and James joined as the group's bassist. This new group named
themselves Seymour in December 1988 and performed live for the first time in
summer 1989. In November, Food
Records' A&R man Andy Ross attended a Seymour performance that
convinced him to court the group for his label. Ross and Food's boss, David
Balfe, didn't like the band's name, so Food drew up a list of alternative
names, from which the band decided on "Blur". Food Records finally
signed the newly christened Blur in March 1990.
From March to July 1990, Blur toured the UK and then
released the "She's So High" single, which reached number 48 in the UK Singles Chart. "There's No Other Way",
became a hit, peaking at number eight. As a result of the single's
success, Blur became pop stars. NME magazine wrote in 1991, "[Blur] are [the]
acceptable pretty face of a whole clump of bands that have emerged since the
whole Manchester thing started to run out of steam."
1992–1995
After discovering they were £60,000 in debt, Blur
toured the United States in 1992 in an attempt to recoup their financial
losses. The group released the single "Popscene" to coincide with the
start of the tour. Featuring "a rush of punk guitars, '60s pop hooks,
blaring British horns, controlled fury, and postmodern humor, "Popscene" was a
turning point for the band musically. However, upon its release it only charted
at number 32.
"We felt 'Popscene' was a big departure; a very,
very English record," Albarn told the NME in 1993, "But that
annoyed a lot of people ... We put ourselves out on a limb to pursue this
English ideal and no-one was interested."
During the two-month American tour, the band became
increasingly unhappy, often venting frustrations on each other, leading to
several physical confrontations. The band members were homesick; Albarn said, "I
just started to miss really simple things ... I missed everything about
England so I started writing songs which created an English atmosphere." Upon the group's return to
the United Kingdom, Blur had undergone an ideological and image shift intended
to celebrate their British heritage in contrast to the popularity of American grunge bands
like Nirvana.
The band
completed their second album Modern Life Is Rubbish in December 1992, but Food Records said the album
required more potential hit singles and asked them to return to the studio for
a second time. The band complied and Albarn wrote "For Tomorrow", which became the
album's lead single, reaching number 28 on the charts. Modern Life Is Rubbish was released in May 1993.
The announcement of the album's release included a press photo featuring the
phrase "British Image 1" spraypainted behind the band (who were
dressed in a mixture of mod and skinhead attire) and a mastiff-breed dog. At the time,
such imagery was viewed as nationalistic and racially insensitive by the
British music press; to quiet concerns, Blur subsequently released the
"British Image 2" photo, which was "a camp restaging of a
pre-war aristocratic tea party".
http://bandwallpapers51.blogspot.com/2010_11_01_archive.html
The success of Parklife (1994) revived Blur's commercial fortunes. It entered the British charts
at number one and stayed on the album charts for 90 weeks. Enthusiastically greeted by
the music press—the NME called it "a Great Pop
Record ... bigger, bolder, narkier and funnier [than Modern
Life is Rubbish]"—Parklife is regarded as one of
Britpop's defining records.
Blur began
working on their fourth album The Great Escape at the start of 1995. Building upon the band's
previous two albums, Albarn's lyrics for the album consisted of several
third-person narratives. James reflected, "It was all more elaborate, more
orchestral, more theatrical, and the lyrics were even more twisted ... It
was all dysfunctional, misfit characters fucking up." The release of the album's
lead single "Country House" played a part in Blur's public rivalry with
Manchester band Oasis termed "The
Battle of Britpop". Partly due to increasing antagonisms
between the groups, Blur and Oasis ultimately decided to release their new
singles on the same day, an event the NME called "The British
Heavyweight Championship". The debate over which band would top the British
singles chart became a media phenomenon, and Albarn appeared on the News at
Ten. At the end of the week, "Country House"
ultimately outsold Oasis' "Roll With
It" selling 274,000 copies to Oasis' 216,000,
becoming Blur's first number one single.
The Great Escape was released in September
1995 to rapturous reviews, and spent two weeks on the UK
Album Chart at number one. The NME hailed it as
"spectacularly accomplished, sumptuous, heart-stopping and
inspirational". However, opinion quickly changed and Blur found
themselves largely out of favour with the media and critics once again. Following the worldwide
success of Oasis' (What's the Story) Morning Glory?, the media quipped that "[Blur] wound up winning
the battle but losing the war." Blur became perceived as an "inauthentic middle
class pop band" in comparison to the "working class heroes" Oasis,
which Albarn said made him feel "stupid and confused". 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."
1996–2000
An early 1996 Q magazine interview revealed
that relations between Blur members had become very strained. Coxon, in particular, began
to resent his band mates; James for his playboy lifestyle, and Albarn for his
control over Blur's musical direction and public image.
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 Rowntree put it—"work this band", wrote a letter
to Albarn, describing his desire for their music "to scare people
again". After initial sessions in London, the band left to record the rest
of the album in Iceland, away from the Britpop scene.
The result was Blur, the band's fifth studio album, released in February
1997. The band's new sound gained an audience in the U.S., where the record
received strong reviews as the album and became a hit, mostly because of the
popularity of "Song 2" Although the album could not match the sales of their
previous albums in the UK, Blur became the band's most
successful internationally.
Released in March 1999,
Blur's sixth studio album 13 saw them
drift still further away from their Britpop-era attitude and sound. Orbit's
production style allowed for more jamming, and incorporated a "variety of
emotions, atmospheres, words and sounds" into the mix. 13
was creatively dominated by Coxon, who "was
simply allowed to do whatever he chose, unedited", by Orbit. Albarn's lyrics—more
heart-felt, personal and intimate than on previous occasions—were reflective of
his break-up with Elastica frontwoman Justine
Frischmann, his partner of eight years. The album received
generally favourable reviews from the press. While Q called it "a dense,
fascinating, idiosyncratic and accomplished art rock album”.
In July 1999,
in celebration of their tenth anniversary, Blur released a 22-CD limited edition box-set of their singles. In
October 2000, the group released the best-of album Blur: The Best of, which debuted at number three in the UK. By this
time, the group had largely disowned the upbeat pop singles from the Britpop
era, and favoured the more arty, experimental work on Blur and 13. In an otherwise highly enthusiastic review of the
best-of for the NME, Steve
Sutherland criticised the band's "sheer disregard" for their earlier
work; "Just because these songs embarrassed them once they started
listening to broadsheet critics and retreated wounded from the big-sales battle
with Oasis doesn't mean that we're morons to love them.
2001–present
After 13 and the subsequent tour in
1999, the band entered into a hiatus, during which bandmembers pursued other
projects. Graham Coxon recorded a string of solo albums, while Damon Albarn
created the animated band Gorillaz with Jamie
Hewlett. Alex James worked with Fat Les and
co-wrote several songs with Sophie
Ellis-Bextor and Marianne
Faithfull.
Early in 2002, Blur temporarily broke its hiatus to
record a song that would be played for the European Space Agency's Mars
Lander; however, the plan fell through when the lander was lost. Recording for Blur's next
album got under way in Marrakesh, Morocco in mid-2002. After several weeks of
uncertainty, Coxon confirmed that he had been asked to leave the band for
reasons connected with his "attitude". Coxon stated that
"there were no rows" and "[the band] just recognised the feeling
that we needed some time apart".His last contribution to the band was a
guitar line on the final track of Think Tank, "Battery in Your Leg" which Albarn said
was the only song he ever wrote about the band.
Think Tank, released in May 2003, was filled with atmospheric,
brooding electronic sounds, featuring simpler guitar lines played by
Albarn, and largely relying on other instruments to replace Coxon. Coxon's
absence also meant that Think Tank was almost entirely written
by Albarn. Its sound was seen as a testament to Albarn's increasing interest in African music, Middle Eastern music and electronic music, and to his complete control over
the group's creative direction.
After Coxon significantly thawed about rejoining the
band, James announced in April and August 2007
that the band would reunite and would likely be recording a new album in
October. However this didn't materialise and the subsequent
year was spent on solo projects.
In December 2008, Albarn and Coxon stated that Blur
would reunite for a concert at Hyde
Park on 3 July 2009, but after tickets for the concert sold
out within 2 minutes of release, Blur announced an additional performance at
Hyde Park on 2 July 2009. Blur headlined the Glastonbury Festival on 28 June, where they played for the first time since
their headline slot in 1998. The band released their second greatest hits album Midlife:
A Beginner's Guide to Blur in June
2009.
In January 2010, No
Distance Left to Run, a documentary about the
band, was released in cinemas and a month later on region free.
In April 2010, Blur released their first single and
the first studio recording with the original line-up since 2003, "Fool's Day", for the Record Store Day event as
a 7" limited to 1000 copies. This was released as a free download on their official
website the next day.
In December 2010, No
Distance Left to Run was nominated as Best Long Form Music Video for the 53rd
Grammy Awards. It is the first time Blur has been nominated for a
Grammy Award. In February 2011, Coxon told the NME that while "Every now
and then we [Blur] like to meet up and record a few things", the group did
not have plans to record an album any time soon. "I suppose it might turn
into an LP in six years or something", Coxon said.
In February 2012, Graham Coxon announced
to the Daily Record that Blur will be recording a new album, On 19
February, Albarn and Coxon premiered a new track together live, "Under the
Westway".
On 21 February 2012, Blur were awarded the Outstanding
Contribution to Music award at the 2012
BRIT Awards.
On April 19, 2012, the band announced that a box-set
entitled Blur 21 - containing all seven of
the band's studio albums, four discs of unreleased rarities and three DVDs -
would be released on 30 July, 2012.
Blur will headline at Hyde Park, with New Order and The Specials, to
celebrate the closing of the 2012
Summer Olympics on 12 August 2012.
Blur’s official website: http://www.blur.co.uk/
