1993: Blur - Modern Life is Rubbish

This is another wonderful album cover, and the album that is seen in some ways as the "start" of the Blur we know and love and the seminal album of British music of the decade.

Perhaps. Perhaps it's more about what it represents than what it is. It's not my favourite Blur album - 3rd or 4th favourite really. The tale of its genesis, though, is fascinating in itself.

Blur's first album 'Leisure' was significantly more successful in both the UK and the US, but it's also a bit rubbish. There are a couple of great baggy singles, 'There's No Other Way' and 'She's So High' which showed Damon Albarn's gift for pop songs, but it was generally dismissed as copycat trendhopping.

Funnily enough, I do remember Blur on Top of the Pops in around 1991, and thinking they were rubbish, disconcerting and interesting (legend has it they were on ecstasy, which might explain a bit) so I kept a look out for the name. The early 90s was a musical black hole for me, however and if I'm honest, Blur between 'Bang' and 'Girls and Boys' passed me by entirely. Which is when all this stuff happened.

So the story begins ... they had a terrible US tour where they all psychologically disintegrated and fought each other and were ignored and hated their own music and most of all hated America. So they determined to become a proper British band. First up was the single 'Popscene', all stabbing brass, which was a big flop but is now seen as one of the best singles of the 90s.

Then came the recording of Modern Life is Rubbish, which had the working title Britain Vs America. The eventual title is a lot better. Albarn says that the rubbish means garbage, detritus, i.e. the modern world is just the leftovers of the clogged up past. Nice.

Here's an interesting thing. OK, it's now seen as a classic and proof of Albarn's genius in defiance of prevailing trends and the record company, but perhaps that's not the whole story.

Blur submitted the original album and were told it needed more in the way of singles, so Albarn wrote For Tomorrow. Then they wanted another "more American" single so they recored Chemical World.
So, really, who's the genius? Would this be half the album without those two songs, two of the finest in Blur's canon which they still play to this day? OK, Damon Albarn is a magnificent songwriter but it was not his instinct to include the two best songs on the album.

It was still be a good album with a great idea and great theme without those songs and Blur would probably still have gone on to do Parklife because it's not like For Tomorrow and Chemical World were career-boosting hits at the time. But, still, they make the album.

It's funny to think that before Modern Life, Damon wasn't thought of as much of a lyricist. For Tomorrow, the first song on the album, is one of his great tours de force, a lovely splurge of words, a romantic London song which really was the definition of the music I loved back then.

Starshaped is another cracking song (and the name of a mad Blur documentary of the time) and the song which really epitomises the cliche of oompah-loompah gor blimey guvnor Blur is Sunday Sunday - I've got to say I love it.

There are plenty of other good songs on the album, Advert and Colin Zeal and Oily Water etc. Still, few would say they didn't improve on the template with Parklife.

Seeing Blur in 2009 at Hyde Park was an indescribably awesome gig, especially since, for my own sins, I'd missed them first time around. It was a massive gig and it felt like I was part of a generation of like-minded people, which truly is a feeling I've hardly ever had in my life.

Blur were my band like they were for tens of thousands of others, the band that got me into modern music, to indie music, to real music. It was End of a Century, from Parklife, which really did it, I loved the lyrics and the brass. I loved the tracksuit tops. Later on, I loved the guitar, the ideas, the intelligence, the personalities (apart Alex James, who I always thought seemed like a cock, which he probably is, but his book is really a hoot. However, he's done a lot of TV in the last decade or so s if people think he's going to be more louche, witty and debonair than he is. Really, he's just a guy that got oh so lucky).

Albarn and Coxon isn't quite Lennon and McCartney, Albarn is always the major talent, but it's a pretty tremendous meeting of talents and gifts. And the drummer Dave Rowntree is some people's favourite band member, of course, though he probably won't be prime minister any time soon.

Modern Life is Rubbish was apparently born of hatred of both America and Suede. I'd have to be a pretty one-eyed Blur fan not to recognise that Suede's first two albums were as influential or in fact far more so than Blur's. It's a genuinely bitter rivalry, that one, a personal and professional hatred that has never gone away. Well done to Suede for coming back rocking and with some very decent new songs but Blur took it to a significantly higher level as the two bands progressed.

Damon Albarns turned out to be arguably one of the five most prodigious, most varied, most consistent talents in the history of British pop music, and that, more than ambition, concepts and capturing the zeitgeist was the key to Blur's success and influence.

Still, perhaps if Modern Life is Rubbish had been rubbish, they'd have been dropped, split up and he'd have gone straight to making soundtracks for obscure films or something, so thank goodness for it.

Here's a compilation from the Blur members. No Fat Les.

For Tomorrow
Song 2
Popscene
Best Days
Tender
He Thought of Cars
Bittersweet Bundle of Misery - Graham Coxon
A Soldier's Tale - The Good, the Bad and the Queen
Sunset Coming On - Damon Albarn
Under the Westway
Chemical World
This is a Low
Battery in Your Leg
End of a Century
19/2000 - Gorillaz
Good Song
Beetlebum
The Universal
On Your Own
To the End

There were really far too many to choose from. For the sake of one Coxon song and a song from Mali Music, I've missed Badhead and Out of Time. Are there more great combined Albarn/Coxon songs (many Albarn, really) than almost anyone, even Lennon/McCartney?
I think the most amazing thing about Damon Albarn is that he's headlined big festivals with three different, entirely distincts acts, Blur, Gorillaz and the Good, the Bad and the Queen (yes, they headlined Latitude one year i went, not entirely triumphantly, but certainly atmospherically). Four if you count his operas Monkey and Dr Dee headlining Manchester International Festival.
Still, i'd easily swap everything else he's ever done for one more decent Blur album.