Oi Oi! Here’s a Best Of for Britpop’s cheekiest chappies. And it’s got nothing to do with your Vorsprung durch Technik, y’know… For I haven’t chosen ‘Parklife’ as one of them. Nor have I chosen either of Blur’s #1s – ‘Country House’ and ‘Beetlebum’. What I have done is pick my favourite non-chart topping single (no album tracks allowed) from each of their nine studio albums, plus a couple of standalone singles for good measure. Off we swagger, then…

‘She’s So High’ – from Leisure

Blur’s first album stands out as something of an oddity. Apart from it clearly being Damon Albarn on lead vocals, they don’t sound like the Britpop icons that they would go on to become. ‘She’s So High’ was their first ever release, making #48 in October 1990. It’s very much a shoegaze single, lulling you in with its pounding drone and stoned vocals. It was twinned with ‘I Know’ as a double-‘A’, which is a more uptempo number with a funky Madchester beat. Both songs are a neat time capsule of what indie music sounded like at the dawn of the ’90s, long before anyone had heard of ‘Brit Pop’.

‘Popscene’ – non-album single

I’m cheating a bit here, as ‘Popscene’ wasn’t on any album, but it seems too important to miss off this list. It feels like the sound of Blur coming into their own, the Blur that would go on to become one of the decade’s biggest bands, and is a song that they were proud of and excited to release. When it stalled at #32, in 1992, they were disappointed, and blamed grunge for not allowing upbeat rock music to flourish. Which was sour grapes, even if they did have a point. However, ‘Popscene’ is now regarded as one of, if not the, first real Britpop single. One that would influence a whole genre with its mix of punk and glam, its energy and its snotty Britishness, even if its legacy isn’t reflected in its chart position.

‘Sunday Sunday’ – from Modern Life Is Rubbish

‘Modern Life Is Rubbish’ kicked off the Britpop phase of Blur’s career, and the album’s third single set the template for the sort of perky, Kinks-y hits that they would churn out by the dozen between 1993 and 1996. Many would say they surpassed it a year later on ‘Parklife’, but this song is saved by not having been bludgeoned into our skulls for the past three decades. Plus ‘Parklife’ also doesn’t have ‘Sunday Sunday’s frantic middle-eight, that sounds like a malfunctioning arcade game, or the big brass band that sees us home. The lyrics are no ‘Autumn Almanac’, but there’s charm here in its depiction of a lazy Sunday: He sings the Songs of Praise every week but always falls asleep… The three singles from the album all made the Top 30, and though a good case could be made for ‘For Tomorrow’, I think ‘Sunday Sunday’ best encapsulates Blur on the verge of becoming massive.

‘Girls & Boys’ – from Parklife

And massive they became, thanks to ‘Parklife’, and its lead single ‘Girls & Boys’. Sometimes Britpop gets written off as a regressive movement, a fin de siecle piss-up for the lads and ladettes. But that was just one half of it (the Oasis half). The other half was Brett Anderson’s floppy fringe and amyl nitrate innuendo, Jarvis Cocker’s knowing looks and camp asides. And of course Blur, singing about Girls who want boys, Who like boys to be girls, Who do boys like they’re girls, Who do girls like they’re boys… All over a squelching electro-disco beat, and a brilliantly cheap looking green-screened video. Yes, it’s a satire about 18-30s holidays, and could be viewed in a sneering ‘look at those plebs’ sort of way. But I don’t think you need to overthink brilliant pop like this.

All the singles from ‘Parklife’ could have been chosen, as all have a claim to being among Blur’s best. From the soaring lounge-pop of ‘To the End’, the ubiquity of the title-track, to the bittersweet ‘End of a Century’. But I’ll go with the lead-single, which made #5 in the spring of 1994, and really kicked Britpop into gear.

‘The Universal’ – from The Great Escape

‘The Great Escape’ gave Blur their first number one single, which also brought with it all the hullaballoo of the ‘Battle of Britpop’. But it was the album’s second single, a #5 hit in November 1995, which is the real highlight. It’s a sweeping ballad, more strings than guitars, about a future where technology has taken over. The looming end of the twentieth century was a theme that cropped up throughout Blur’s Britpop phase, never more so than in ‘The Universal’: No-one here is alone, Satellites in every home… Eerily prescient, perhaps, as we look back from our social media age. The video is similarly creepy, a tribute to a ‘A Clockwork Orange’, with Blur all in white, playing to a bar full of uninterested, and increasingly chaotic, yuppies. Can we also take a moment to appreciate Damon Albarn, already the ’90s best-looking frontman, in mascara… (Fun fact: former Tottenham forward and BBC pundit Garth Crooks bought one of the all-seeing golf balls from the video at a charity auction in 1999).

‘Song 2’ – from Blur

I’m going for the second single from their fifth album, as the lead single made #1 and I’ve already covered it. And while I do like ‘Beetlebum’, I probably would have chosen ‘Song 2’ because, well, it bloody rocks. It’s also perfectly named, as not only was it the second single, it is also exactly two minutes long, made #2 in the charts, and it is the second track on the album (the song’s title is a placeholder that they never bothered to change). Things had been going sour for Blur following ‘The Great Escape’, and it’s not much of an exaggeration to say that they helped kill off Britpop with the follow-up. Gone are the larking cheeky-chappies; it is much darker, grittier, electronic in places, and grungier… Speaking of which, since their ill-fated tour of the States in 1992, Blur had spoken out against grunge, and American rock, and some say that ‘Song 2’ was intended as a piss-take of the genre. They apparently had no idea that their label would want the song on the album, let alone want it released as a single. And of course, when it did come it out it became their best-known song in the US. Funny that… Going by Damon’s outburst when they played Coachella earlier this year, he still has some unresolved anger towards Americans…

(Also, an honorable mention to this album’s fourth single, ‘M.O.R.’, which also rocks.)

‘Coffee & TV’ – from 13

Second single from the album, again. ’13’ was even more experimental than ‘Blur’, coming out in 1999 with Britpop going through its death-spasms. The lead-single was the near eight-minute long ‘Tender’, which is a good song – a swampy, gospel oddity – stretched way too thin. It was famously (and rightfully) held off number one by ‘…Baby One More Time’. The follow-up was ‘Coffee & TV’, written and sung by Graham Coxon about his struggles with alcohol. It contains, for my money, one of the greatest opening lines of all time: Do you feel like a chain store, Practically floored… Plus there’s also the award winning video featuring Milky, the animated milk carton.

‘Out of Time’ – from Think Tank

In the four years between ’13’ and ‘Think Tank’, Graham Coxon had left the band and Damon Albarn had released a well-aclaimed and succesful album with Gorillaz. For their seventh album, the remaining three members decamped to Morrocco. ‘Out of Time’, the album’s lead single and Blur’s most recent Top 10 hit, features an orchestra from Marrakesh, who provide the eerie, ethereal sounds that swirl around this gorgeous song. It also features perhaps Albarn’s best vocal performance, so soothing and clear that it works as a form of ASMR. Following this album, and the subsequent tour, Blur disbanded for the better part of a decade. (A shout out too for ‘Think Tank’s second single, the completely different ‘Crazy Beat’, a sort of ‘Song 2’ on steroids.)

‘Under the Westway’ – non-album single

Since we had ‘Popscene’, we can have this one too. An out-of-the-blue release in 2012, of a song written by Albarn and Coxon for a charity performance. Perhaps Blur’s most melancholy ballad, written about a man sitting under the A40 flyover in West London. Think a 21st century ‘Waterloo Sunset’, but far less hopeful. And yet it’s beautiful, ending on a thumping piano note reminiscent of ‘A Day in the Life’. It is the band’s most recent Top 40 hit to date.

‘Ong Ong’ – from The Magic Whip

Blur reformed in the early 2010s, and went out on tour. A new album was not on the cards, however, until a festival they were supposed to be playing in Japan was cancelled, leaving the band in Hong Kong with time to spare. They booked a small studio in Kowloon, and bashed what would go on to become ‘The Magic Whip’ out in five days. ‘Ong Ong’ has a joyful bounciness to it that harks back to the goofiness of ‘Sunday Sunday’ and ‘Parklife’, but also has a middle-aged melancholy buried within. Plus I have somewhat personal reasons for choosing it, as it’s a cute tribute to my home of twelve years, a land of black kites and wishing trees (as well as tarmac that melts on hot, sunny days like today…)

‘St. Charles Square’ – from The Ballad of Darren

I have to admit to not being that enthused by Blur’s most recent album, last year’s ‘The Ballad of Darren’. The standout track by far was the second single, the grungey, crunchy ‘St Charles Square’. It’s a ghost story – theres something down here and it’s living under the floorboards – but they are the ghosts of Britpop past. Apparently ‘Tesco Disco’ was a real unlicensed club, next to a Tesco in Notting Hill. Which is brilliant.

I hope you enjoyed this frolic through the best British band of the ’90s… (please do disagree with that statement in the comments below!) Up next we return to regular programming, starting out on 1998!