Top 5 Blur Songs

So - Blur or Oasis? That was the musical conundrum of my youth. But the answer was, and is so painfully easy. Oasis made two fantastic albums, then simply ran out of ideas. I could name only 5 or 6 songs from 1997 onwards that are any good! Whereas, in 1997, Blur still had a whole load of distance left to run (gettit?). Bands work best when they evolve - when you can hear the growth and added depth album to album. Blur is one of the those bands - each record has a distinct personality, and although they helped to invent Britpop (a genre very close to my heart, that I'll be returning to again and again) they'd moved past Britpop by early 1997, and were on to greater things. For the record, my favourite Blur album in the self-titled one. It felt brave, edgy, but still very much pop. It still does. So here goes:

1. Popscene (Modern Life is Rubbish bonus track & Single, 1993)

Britpop condensed into 3 minutes and 16 seconds. Revolutionary to my ears - not to mention wild and energetic live, to this day.

2. Look Inside America (Blur, 1997)

A little ray of sunshine on a very dark second side of the self-titled record. It's the perfect synergy of the  cockney confessional lyrics of the old Blur, and the messy Pavement-esque newly americanised Blur. It's also gorgeous - and the studio version has a lovely call and answer instrumental where Coxon trades shrieking guitar wails with a string quartet.

3. Blue Jeans (Modern Life is Rubbish, 1993)

Modern Life is Rubbish is a perfect slice of life record - and here Albarn paints pictures of, in his own words,  "Being 23, in love, in London" . I wanna stay this way - forever.

4. Trimm Trabb (13, 1999)

13 was a hard album to love. But there is no album I can think of that sounded anything like it at the time. People said "they've done a KID A" - but no - they did a 13. This record is way ahead of its time, and reminds me more of Wilco's "A Ghost is Born" than anything else. This song is so magisterial - you somehow know from the opening minute that some kind of crescendo is coming - there is a creeping sense of doom - and a band on fire.

5. This is a Low (Parklife, 1994)

No list of Blur songs is worth its salt without this. If somebody asked to me sum up 90's British guitar music with one song - I'd play them This is a Low.