The path to Alex James Britpop Classical

Believe it or not, there was a rock band before there was ALEX JAMES BRITPOP CLASSICAL!!!!!!! and that band was called Blur.

I had a thought about Blur (when I could tear my mind away from ALEX! JAMES! BRITPOP! CLASSICAL!) which was that, slightly surprisingly, my favourite Blur album is now Think Tank.

Think Tank is the seventh of nine Blur studio albums, and, although (thankfully) there have been two Blur albums since, this is their break-up album, the sound of a band on its last legs, the two key members divided, the glory years long gone.

Think Tank is not the only sad Blur album about the end of things, of course. It is a funny thing about this band, so far from their tabloid image, that Blur, 13, Think Tank and The Ballad of Darren, are all, to an extent, about the end of an era, and even Parklife, their prime "Britpop" album, contains To the End, End of a Century, This is a Low and Badhead - songs about ends and/or feeling bad.

I'll take a little detour from talking just about Blur to talking about Britpop in general, which will lead back to Think Tank. As much as I'm quite defensive when the usual criticisms of Britpop recur, it's also true that ... I don't really listen to it. It's not actually the music I like to listen to, and hasn't been for a long time. I think there were an unusual number of excellent indie-guitar bands of that era, many of whom I have considerable fondness for, but it's not the Britpop of theirs that I'd listen to. Like, what are the classic Britpop songs?

• Parklife, Girls and Boys, Country House
• Common People, Disco 2000
• Alright
• Cigarettes and Alcohol, Live Forever
• Trash and Beautiful Ones
• Wake Up Boo
• Waking Up
• Slight Return
• Great Things
• Fine Time
• Female of the Species
• Good Enough
• Daydreamer
• Inbetweener

A few nice memories, but not sure the last time I chose to listen to any of those...

Blur were the first of those bands for me, in some ways they're the definition of Britpop, and they're the one I still love the most, but the reason I still love them so much is precisely how quickly and how far they moved away from it.

Think Tank is probably the Blur album that sounds least like Blur - for obvious reasons, mainly that Graham Coxon only plays on one track. Actually The Good, the Bad and the Queen, from 2007, sounds a lot more, thematically, like a Blur album than Think Tank (that is another album I realise I love quite a lot now).

I liked it when it came out, but have grown to love it. It's interesting for a few reasons. It's the first Blur album after Gorillaz had success, and after the Mali Music album, so the first time Blur was just one Damon Albarn project, not the Damon Albarn project. With Graham's absence, there is more contribution from Dave and Alex, both in terms of composition and background vocals. There is more acoustic guitar, less lead guitar. There are more drum loops and world music influences. Although there is the trauma and sadness of Coxon's absence, this is Albarn near the start of the long-term relationship he'd be in for the two decades. In short, this is the closest he ever gets to sounding like a nice, normal person on an album. 

By which I mean, no shade, there are several really lovely, endearing songs on this. I've always loved Battery in Your Leg (the song about Coxon that Coxon actually plays on) - there's Good Song and Sweet Song, which really are those things (I think Sweet Song is one of my all-time favourite Blur songs). On the Way to the Club is also a subtle beauty, and then there's the single Out of Time, which gets better and better with age, and leads the anti-war theme of the album. I always felt with 13, this album's predecessor, that I wanted to love it, but it just didn't hold on to enough tunes and lyrics - it just didn't have enough "song" for someone like me, whereas Think Tank carries on the path away from Parklife, but remembers to have more actual song.

For years, I've loathed Crazy Beat, the second single, the botched attempt to do another Song 2, or Girls and Boys, produced by Norman Cook, but now, in the context of the album, I almost like how botched it is, as if the whole purpose is to say "this is not what this band is" ... well, there's a spin ...

Blur are a very different band after The Great Escape - imagine if their first album had been Blur, how differently the world would look on them. Don't get me wrong, when I go see the monster stadium act BLUR what I want is To the End and The Universal and For Tomorrow and This is a Low and Popscene, and, fuck it, Country House, but, to me, the reason Blur are the greatest British band of their era is because of Blur, Think Tank and The Ballad of Darren (I like The Magic Whip as well, certainly the second half of it, and think 13 is a nobler failure than The Great Escape is).

Albarn's prolificity this century is quite something - three Africa Express albums, two GBQ, two solo, two operas, one musical, I'd even forgotten there was Rocket Juice and the Moon as well. Oh yes, and eight albums and several EPs by one of the biggest dance/hip-hop acts in the world. 

My favourite of all that is still Blur, and I sure hope there's a 10th Blur album to cap it all - to celebrate, returning to Alex James Britpop Classical, that a band can still be triumphant whilst having the most truly embarrassing grifter of a bassist any band could possibly have, but anyway, here's a 60-song Albarn compilation, which I think has a pretty dizzying level of quality and range.

1. Ascension - Gorillaz ft Vince Staples
2. Song 2 - Blur
3. Sunset Coming On - Mali Music
4. For Tomorrow - Blur
5. There's No Other Way - Blur
6. The Narcissist - Blur
7. On Melancholy Hill - Gorillaz
8. On the Way to the Club - Blur
9. 19/2000 - Gorillaz
10. Young and Lovely - Blur
11. Apple Carts - Damon Albarn
12. The Nearer the Mountain, the Purer the Stream - Damon Albarn
13. Badhead - Blur
14. Good Song - Blur
15. Dirty Harry - Gorillaz
16. Photographs (You Are Taking Now) - Damon Albarn
17. Trimm Trabb - Blur
18. End of a Century - Blur
19. 80s Life - The Good the Bad and the Queen
20. Sweet Song - Blur
21. He Thought of Cars - Blur
22. Oil - Gorillaz ft Stevie Nicks
23. Superfast Jellyfish - Gorillaz ft Gruff Rhys and De la Soul
24. Yuko and Hiro - Blur
25. Under the Westway - Blur
26. Soldier's Tale - The Good, the Bad and the Queen
27. Everyday Robots - Damon Albarn
28. Best Days - Blur
29. Silent Running - Gorillaz
30. On Your Own - Blur
31. Heavy Seas of Love - Damon Albarn
32. Sunday Sunday - Blur
33. Poison - Rocket Juice and the Moon
34. Herculean - The Good the Bad and the Queen
35. Andromeda - Gorillaz
36. Popscene - Blur
37. Cracker Island - Gorillaz
38. Merrie Land - The Good the Bad and the Queen
39. Chemical World - Blur
40. Beetlebum - Blur
41. We Got the Power - Gorillaz ft Jehnny Beth and Noel Gallagher
42. This is a Low - Blur
43. Rock the House - Gorillaz
44. Momentary Bliss - Gorillaz
45. The Universal - Blur
46. Ong Ong - Blur
47. Feel Good Inc - Gorillaz ft De la Soul
48. Tender - Blur
49. Goodbye Albert - Blur
50. Barbaric - Blur
51. Northern Whale - The Good the Bad and the Queen
52. Skinny Ape - Gorillaz
53. Pyongyang - Blur
54. The Universal - Blur
55. Let Me Out - Gorillaz ft Mavis Staples and Pusha T
56. The Heights - Blur
57. Death of the Party - Blur
58. Battery in Your Leg - Blur
59. Out of Time - Blur
60. To the End - Blur ft Francoise Hardy