Line #35 YMMV/Blur


1	* AmericansHateTingle: Along with Britpop in general, why their pre-''Blur'' (the 5th album) material wasn't well-recognized or accepted in the States by anyone who wasn't a music critic. "Song 2" to this day remains their one and only impression on American pop culture.
2	* {{Applicability}}: "Girls and Boys" is really about nightclubs and the...[[UnusualEuphemism things that happen there]]. Many people, specifically bisexual and pansexual people, choose to see it as a bi/pan anthem instead.
3	* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic:
4	** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dI-6-n-4Xok "The Universal" live at Hyde Park.]] Thousands of people singing "it really, really, really could happen" at the climax of the first show the band had done in years- it's utterly uplifting and incredible. Especially at the very climax of the song, where Albarn stops singing entirely and the audience just keeps going, taking the place of the choir in the original recording.
5	** "Bustin' and Dronin'", a [[EpicRocking 6-minute long]] b-side to Song 2 with some amazing distorted guitars.
6	** ''13''. All of it! Especially [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0oXAIAPaRI Battle]] and [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oqXVx3sBOk Coffee & TV]].
7	** The glorious apocalyptic drinking song that is "On Your Own".
8	** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4NgQIWGJHU Live Acoustic "For Tomorrow"]]. ''La la lalala, la la la la la la lalala...''
9	** "Girls and Boys". You probably have the chorus stuck in your head now just by thinking about it.
10	** Even if it's supposed to be satire, "Song 2" is still a fun listen. Simple yet effective.
11	** The funky guitar riff in "Jets", fitting both this and the trope below.
12	* ChorusOnlySong: Go on, guess.
13	* EndingFatigue: ''Modern Life is Rubbish'' suffers from quite a bit of AlbumFiller towards the back half. "Turn It Up" in particular is hated by the band, especially Albarn.
14	* EnsembleDarkHorse: Despite not having the same commercial success or critical acclaim as ''Parklife'', ''13'' is often considered the band's best album among the fandom.
15	* FandomRivalry: With Music/{{Oasis}}. This rivalry actually holds a lot of sociopolitical significance, as it is strongly rooted in class and regional tensions in British society, with Oasis coming from the grittier working class in northern England and Blur from the more artsy, southern middle class. This led the "Battle of Britpop" chart war between Oasis' "Roll With It" and Blur's "Country House" to become not only a battle of musical preferences, but also of class conflict and British regionalism.
16	* FriendlyFandoms: Many fans of Blur are also fans of Damon Albarn's other popular music project Music/{{Gorillaz}}.
17	* SugarWiki/FunnyMoments: "Mr. Robinson's Quango".
18	-->He ran into the toilets in the town hall
19	-->He got his biro out and wrote on the wall
20	-->"I'm wearing black French knickers under my suit
21	-->I've got stocking and suspenders on
22	-->I'm feeling rather loose"
23	-->Ooh, I'm a naughty boy
24	-->Ooh, I'm a naughty, naughty boy
25	* GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff: They were pretty successful in Iceland and Sweden back in the day.
26	* GrowingTheBeard: The band really hit their stride on their second album ''Modern Life Is Rubbish''.
27	* HarsherInHindsight: In the 1999 video for "Coffee & TV" - perhaps the band's [[MusicVideoOvershadowing most famous video]] - The man missing on the back of Milky the Milk Carton is played by the band's guitarist Graham Coxon. By the time their next album, ''Think Tank'', was released in 2003, he ''was'' missing from Blur, having quit the band a few years earlier in acrimony.
28	* HoYay: The boys have kissed on and off stage.
29	%%* MisaimedFandom: No surprise, since the band was {{irony}} at its fullest, but some people have problems noticing that.
30	* ObviousBeta: A rare music example in ''Parklife'''s "Far Out". Compare [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTd5j6S337s the song that ended in the album]] against [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9UYA2EY2DQ its demo]] and [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUWEzsKqPJE a remix that completes the album song]]. Chances are that you will prefer either the demo or the remix over the final track due to how they basically ''chopped half the song'' on its way to the album.
31	** "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2NorSMvNzA Alex's Song]]" from the same album's B-sides also suffers from this, due to Alex James {{Corpsing}} heavily against the pitch distortion and eventually giving in and dropping out of the mic to laugh. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9g7zM_HSIc The demo]] has some extra content compared to the "finished" song. It seems Alex James tends to get the short end of the stick when it comes to his songs...
32	* SignatureSong: "Song 2", obviously. If it's not that, it's probably either "Parklife" or "Girls and Boys"
33	* SoOkayItsAverage: ''Leisure'' is generally considered a passable enough attempt to blend {{Shoegazing}} and Madchester, and has some fan-favourite songs on it, but suffers from half-baked lyrics, copious amounts of AlbumFiller, and a general sense of it playing FollowTheLeader to other acts from the time. Retrospective apprasals of ''Think Tank'' also tend to lean in this direction.
34	* SurprisinglyImprovedSequel: ''Leisure'', while containing a handful of great songs, is generally seen as an attempt to cash in on the popularity of baggy, which was prominent due to the popularity of bands like Music/TheStoneRoses and Music/HappyMondays. For ''Modern Life Is Rubbish'', they instead took inspiration from bands like Music/TheKinks, Music/TheSmallFaces, and Music/{{XTC}}. While the album wasn't as successful commercially as its predecessor, it received much stronger reviews from critics and marked the beginning of the band's Britpop era.
35	* SuspiciouslySimilarSong: Done deliberately with "Song 2", which the band made as a parody of Music/{{Nirvana}}'s [[Music/NevermindAlbum "Smells Like Teen Spirit"]].
36	** Both "When the Cows Come Home" and "One Born Every Minute" were written on the same day, and both have a similar oom-pah feel to them that suggests they could have been the same song at one point. The former came out as a b-side to "For Tomorrow" and the latter was recorded in the Parklife sessions but wouldn't see release till the "Country House" single the next year.
37	* SugarWiki/SweetDreamsFuel: "Optigan 1".
38	* TheyChangedItNowItSucks: Notably averted; their {{Genre Shift}}s were well-received.
39	* ValuesDissonance: "Colin Zeal" from ''Modern Life is Rubbish'' refers to the titular individual as "the modern retard". Take into consideration that in 1993, the word "retard" was not usually seen as a very pejorative and prejudicial one.
40	* VindicatedByHistory: ''Especially'' in America, their critical stature increased as years went by. By the end of the 90's, Many of the same American publications who negatively reviewed their earlier work were now putting records like ''Modern Life Is Rubbish'' and ''Parklife'' into their Best Albums of the Decade lists.
41	** The "Popscene" single received negative reviews at the time and was a commercial flop - enough so that Blur decided not to include it on ''Modern Life is Rubbish'' - but grew in esteem over time and is now considered a classic that was the TropeMaker for {{Britpop}}.
42	* TheWoobie:
43	** Milky, the carton of milk from "Coffee and TV", but he can also count as an IronWoobie; despite seeing things that are absolutely terrifying to a walking milk carton, he [[{{Determinator}} keeps on truckin' until he finds Graham]]. [[spoiler: Who then unknowingly kills him by drinking the milk inside him. But he dies [[GoOutWithASmile smiling]], knowing that Graham made it back home. He [[EarnYourHappyEnding goes to Heaven]] [[TogetherInDeath with the female milk carton he was infatuated with (from earlier in the video) that was run over by a car]].]]
44	** The fairy and squirrel in "Good Song", it was obvious the two developed feelings for one another only [[spoiler: for the squirrel to accidentally eat the fairy's head (thinking it was a nut) and then getting killed by wasps and other fairies ''for some reason'']].

Context YMMV / Blur