Song 67: Country House

I wrote several posts, a few years ago, wherein I took a single song and ruminated on it in a vaguely autobiographical way. That was pretty fun. It's the part of the blog I most enjoy looking back at.

So, I'll do the same again and start with Blur's 'Country House'. 25 years old, man. 25 years. Dan Abnormal's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Odd one to start with. I think I just want to refute the regularly-made claim that this is a terrible song and the nadir of an era quite near the gutter at the best of times.

Britpop was great. 'Country House' was fine. Cleared that one up.

I know the video's pretty grim, but, honestly, I'm not sure I've watched it in full and I'm not concerned with the video. There are lots of shitty videos. I mean, in other genres, they're pretty much all that shit.

The song is good. It's not Blur's best single but it's not their worst (that's 'Crazy Beat', obviously). Whereas 'Roll With It' is, even now, Oasis's worst single, worse than every mediocre single they released in the next 15 years. 'Roll With It' is worse.

"Don't ever stand aside
Don't ever be denied
You wanna be who you'd be
If you're coming with me"

Fuck's sake.

Though it's funny, isn't it, that both songs suddenly have this expression of deep woe;

"Blow, blow me out I am so sad, I don't know why" vs

"I think I've got a feeling I'm lost inside"

All right, Britpop heavyweights, lighten up.

Anyway, very briefly, as I've made this case before, Britpop was great. The only defining feature of a Britpop band is that they say they weren't Britpop. Everyone wants to call Britpop the shit stuff. But what's the point of it just being the shit stuff? They might all disown the tag, but as James Dean Bradfield so rightly said, it's the tag that made their careers.

Manics, Furries, Ash, Gene, Suede, B and S, all of them and all the other good ones ... they're all Britpop ... everyone needs to stop whining and saying "oh, we didn't feel part of that scene at all, we were doing really different ..."

But, yes, everyone accepts that 'Country House' is Britpop. And everyone hates 'Country House' now don't they?

I'm pretty certain the radio first played 'Country House' and 'Roll With It' on the same day, and as a Blur fan, it was pretty satisfying to hear the difference between the two. If you're going to try and have a Number 1, you may as well have a catchy tune... which doesn't have terrible words. People talked about the "Morning glory" bit and the "Balzac/Prozac" bit, which was fine and, you know, something to talk about, but I did, and still do, like Albarn's confident phrasing - the way he phrases "thought to himself whoops I've got a lot of money", for example, is just very nice ...

As a city dweller unsuccessful fella who has found himself living in a medium-sized house in the country (large town) but having spent many hours talking with Londony people about in-town vs out-of-town living, I think the subject is pretty valid and well-handled - overwhelmingly the song's about not being able to run from yourself, whatever measures you put in place, and that seems pretty universal.

Anyhow, pretty rapidly the indie music which had been mine, only mine, for all of ooh four months belonged to everybody and it's vast success led to Country House being a song people came to despise and use to describe what a dreadful time it all was.

But actually it was ok. And I've seen Blur play twice at Hyde Park in the 2000s and no one there was embarrassed or appalled by 'Country House' ... it sounded like what it was ... a pretty good song.

Just a little PS, because I still haven't got to the nub of what I wanted to say - the anti-rockism of the present day is fine, the dismantling of the pantheon, the 50/50 festival line-ups are great, the necessary eclecticism of good taste, but, look, if you're roughly my age and you got into music in the 90s, you don't have to apologise for your taste.  Pop music in the early 90s was fucking dreadful - it was awful, it was Mr Vain by Culture Beat and Doop by Doop and countless hideous soulless songs on radio and TV to sit through. The mid-90s guitar music explosion felt like a great and revolutionary thing, maybe not to the journalist covering it, but to fans. Yes, I know it's all pretty male and white, but not to the extent that people say now - I remember in my first few months of reading it Tricky and the Prodigy and Mark Morrison and Portishead and Madonna and the Fugees and Echobelly and Skunk Anansie and even East 17, for what it's worth, being on the covers of NME and Melody Maker. As well as Oasis, Blur beat Michael Jackson's 'You Are Not Alone' to Number 1, which was co-written with R Kelly. That seems fine.