{"id":17063,"date":"2025-09-15T05:20:17","date_gmt":"2025-09-15T05:20:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/17063\/"},"modified":"2025-09-15T05:20:17","modified_gmt":"2025-09-15T05:20:17","slug":"every-blur-album-ranked-from-worst-to-best","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/17063\/","title":{"rendered":"Every Blur Album Ranked From Worst To Best"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thanks to a swaggering role in Britpop\u2019s naughty \u201990s carry-on, the four men of Blur are haunted by depictions of themselves at their most annoying and cartoon-like. But peer back \u2013 into the punky chaos of the pre-Blur Seymour, and back further, into teenage epiphanies aroused by The Jam, The Specials and New Order, into singer\/songwriter Damon Albarn\u2019s boho background (his father Keith managed Soft Machine) and apprenticeship in music theatre \u2013 and the soul of a fascinating, polymathic pop phenomenon emerges.<\/p>\n

As a young indie band on the rise, 1988-91, Blur were rowdy and puppyish. Rhythms were a war between drummer Dave Rowntree\u2019s heads-down flailing and Alex James\u2019 pert, elasto-poppy bass lines. Graham Coxon\u2019s guitars could be relied upon to surprise \u2013 his sizzling riffs on Syd-Barrett-goes-baggy single There\u2019s No Other Way were a killer calling card \u2013 while his fellow alumnus of Stanway Comprehensive, Colchester, Damon Albarn, wrote the songs and sang with sssibilant esssesss.<\/p>\n

They liked to get in your face, often drunkenly, but their big bet, on English-flavoured pop at grunge\u2019s apex, paid off. The subsequent alignment of UK pop culture behind them went to their heads, or did them in, or both, but it\u2019s to their credit that when it came the crash fuelled music that bore the scars, in the scratchy comedown vibe of Blur, the deconstructive urges of 13, and beyond, into idiosyncratic solo projects.<\/p>\n

35 years on from the release of their debut single, Blur are still with us. In July 2023 they played two of the biggest shows of their career at Wembley Stadium<\/a> and released their ninth studio album,\u00a0The Ballad Of Darren<\/a>. One of their best, perhaps? Or maybe not? Read on to see where it comes in our rundown of every Blur studio album\u2026<\/p>\n

9.<\/p>\n

Leisure<\/p>\n

Food, 1991<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

By the band\u2019s own admission, their 1991 debut was an exercise in paddling around in post-baggy, pre-Britpop waters trying to find an identity. As such, much of\u00a0Leisure\u00a0can feel underdeveloped or, as on the Madchester beats tacked on beneath the likes of Bang, an exercise in hitching themselves to someone else\u2019s bandwagon. That being said, it\u2019s an album that also contains two bone fide classic Blur singles (She\u2019s So High and There\u2019s No Other Way) and on the churning, narcotic fog of Sing, an indicator of the depths and possibilities that lay ahead.<\/p>\n

8.<\/p>\n

The Magic Whip<\/p>\n

Parlophone, 2013<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Stranded in Hong Kong for five days in 2013 after the cancellation of Japan\u2019s Tokyo Rocks Festival, Blur knocked up an entire album\u2019s worth of new material in their downtime, which Graham Coxon later took to\u00a0Parklife\/Modern Life Is Rubbish\u00a0producer Stephen Street to polish up enough to convince Damon Albarn they had a Blur-worthy collection on their hands. Despite its ad-hoc creation,\u00a0The Magic Whip\u00a0provided a fine comeback. Humid and tightly-packed, with the hum and buzz of Coxon\u2019s guitars stuttering and spluttering throughout, here was Blur in their 40s: world-weary at times and audibly frazzled, but reconnected to their spirit and identity in way that we hadn\u2019t heard since the end of the ’90s.<\/p>\n

7.<\/p>\n

The Great Escape<\/p>\n

Parlophone, 1995<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The final instalment of Blur\u2019s \u2018life\u2019 trilogy, The Great Escape may have felt like Parklife Pt2 in some respects, but it\u2019s also an eerily accurate bellwether of British pop culture in the mid 90s. The Oasis-squashing Country House reveals a new level of irony when you realise it was sending up Food boss Dave Balfe, and while Charmless Man and Stereotypes may now sound like brash cousins of more detailed character studies like Tracey Jacks or For Tomorrow, The Great Escape also contains some of Blur\u2019s finest ever moments: Scott Walker homage The Universal and He Thought Of Cars \u2013 a seasick knot of distortion and melancholy that pointed the way to a richer future away for the shadow of the Britpop monster they had helped to spawn.<\/p>\n

6.<\/p>\n

Think Tank<\/p>\n

Parlophone, 2003<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Given the mid-project departure of Graham Coxon (at least he left the vertiginous guitar nuages of epic closer, Battery In Your Leg) this is victory from the jaws of defeat. Recording in London and Marrakesh, with the help of Norman Cook, and with The Clash\u2019s Combat Rock on Albarn\u2019s mind, Blur hosted a multi-ethnic meltdown on their blithest record since Britpop flag-bearer Parklife, with Maroc-punk nuttah We\u2019ve Got A File On You and Black Grapey drug-paean Brothers And Sisters balancing the transfiguring, melancholy pop of Out Of Time. A slightly patched-together, demo\u2019d vibe adds charm but \u2013 surprise \u2013 it lacks something. That\u2019s it: Graham Coxon.<\/p>\n

5.<\/p>\n

The Ballad Of Darren<\/p>\n

Parlophone, 2023<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Perhaps it\u2019s too early to tell where Blur\u2019s ninth album should fall in a rundown of the band\u2019s greatest work, but\u00a0The Ballad Of Darren<\/a>\u00a0certainly sounds like the record Blur\u00a0should\u00a0be making in 2023. With the group themselves playing two nights at Wembley Stadium<\/a> shortly before the record\u2019s release, Britpop nostalgia is clearly a booming business still, yet the looking back that takes place here isn\u2019t a cheery hark back to past glories, but a sadness for what\u2019s been lost as the band navigate middle age together. Despite its glammy guitar stomp, and even an \u2018Oi!\u2019 from Albarn, St Charles Square paints a picture of the singer broken by fame, hiding from success and succumbing to the fear (and worse), and when Coxon joins Albarn to sing of travelling around the world together on The Ballad it\u2019s a bittersweet acknowledgement of their shared lost innocence. As Coxon told MOJO recently: \u201cIt sounds like Blur, but men.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

4.<\/p>\n

Modern Life Is Rubbish<\/p>\n

Food, 1993<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Much truer to Blur\u2019s art-punk soul than their nebulous debut, Leisure, this could still have been their last gasp without the intervention of the Food label\u2019s oft-maligned Andy Ross\/David Balfe axis. Their demand for singles gave rise to Chemical World and the aching For Tomorrow, Albarn\u2019s first mature conceptions. Meanwhile, Modern Life\u2026 looks back, in Colin Zeal\u2019s homage to The Teardrop Explodes\u2019 Went Crazy, and forward, in Starshaped\u2019s pre-echoes of End Of The Century, and Coxon rocks harder than on any Blur album. Bonus: 2012\u2019s two-disc reissue gives you the pivotal Popscene. \u201cLost on the Westway\u201d was Albarn, not for the last time.<\/p>\n

3.<\/p>\n

13<\/p>\n

Food, 1999<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In the late \u201990s, experimental drug use turned Albarn on to music\u2019s texture, groove\u00a0and soul, while William Orbit\u2019s mix of the Blur album\u2019s Movin\u2019 On convinced the group of\u00a0the uses of electronica. Orbit would produce 13, taking the bonnet off Blur and\u00a0exposing its innards \u2013 the raw nerves of Albarn\u2019s split from Britpop consort Justine Frischmann included. Stompy gospel-folk (Tender) and gnarled pop (Coffee & TV)\u00a0thus met indie-dub (Battle) and opiated prog (Caramel) in a trip into inner and outer space. Sadness and weirdness combine in the devastating closing song No Distance Left To Run and in Trailerpark, the roots of Gorillaz are beginning to show.<\/p>\n

2.<\/p>\n

Blur<\/p>\n

Food, 1997<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The patient on the cover\u2019s gurney could have been Blur themselves, ravaged\u00a0by Britpop excess and the Pyrrhic skirmish with Oasis. In its wake Graham Coxon,\u00a0disaffected by The Great Escape\u2019s overwrought Parklife redux, got what he wanted:\u00a0a re-indiefied Blur complete with lo-fi scuff and a heart of darkness (his You\u2019re So Great could be Dinosaur Jr.). And yet Classic Blur\u2122 tropes shine through: clever\/dumb pop gambits like Song 2 and M.O.R.; Ghost Town overtones in Britpop time-caller Death Of A Party;\u00a0the Hunky Dory-isms of Strange News From Another Star. Simultaneously Blur\u2019s most fatigued and yet effortless album.<\/p>\n

1.<\/p>\n

Parklife<\/p>\n

Food, 1994<\/p>\n

\"Blur<\/p>\n

Everything haters hate about Blur, with its yob-march title track a kind of pustulant, contempt-attracting beacon. But don\u2019t blame Parklife for the excesses of the era it presaged with its artful brashness and pop-art palette (a bit like Alf Garnett \u2013 you saw the cautionary irony, or you didn\u2019t). Admire instead the heady alt disco of Girls And Boys, swaggering ultra-Kinks of End Of The Century and the Elgarian melancholy of This Is A Low: key planks in an accidental state-of-the-nation address laced with brio, stylistic dressing-up and tunes. Sometimes records are successful because they are great. This is one of those.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thanks to a swaggering role in Britpop\u2019s naughty \u201990s carry-on, the four men of Blur are haunted by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17064,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[146,85,46,409],"class_list":["post-17063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17063"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17063\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}