(Credit: Alamy)
Sat 18 October 2025 12:00, UK
The Blur album that Damon Albarn hates is a wild one, given that it granted the band valour and victory – but that’s exactly how time works. What was once grand and great and important fades to nothing. What at one point felt heroic can end up feeling lame.
In 1995, tensions in the UK were high. Sure, there was the endless politics to make that so in a more real, global and serious way. But I’m talking about a real battle, a real war, the one raging between the country’s two biggest rock bands.
Britpop had been around for a while now, with the exact date of when it all kicked off being hazy. Some would say it was somewhere between March and May of 1992, between the releases of Blur’s ‘Popscene’ and Suede’s debut, ‘The Drowners’. But most certainly, by the time Oasis emerged with their debut album, Definitely Maybe, in 1994, it was the thing. It was the trend. It was the phenomenon of the moment.
It’s also a tough one to actually pin down, as the vibe of Britpop is complex and nuanced, existing somewhere on the broad spectrum between hyper-masculine lad culture and campness. It was British, obviously, but not in a legitimately patriotic way. Instead, it was more ironic but also genuinely celebratory of British music and its real social culture, like pubs, football shirts and boys getting into fights.
The latter, Blur and Oasis, took on gladly as they promptly fell into one of music history’s most infamous feuds. To allow Noel Gallagher himself to explain it, he said, “Liam and Damon were shagging the same bird, and there was a lot of cocaine involved.” That’s apparently all it really came down to, as he, Allan McGee, added, “There was a situation with a girl. That created the Britpop war. Damon shagged somebody close to Liam. It was one of many women Damon was friendly with. Then he got off with her for a one-night stand, and that created the rub. They were all goading each other after that.”
It began as juvenile as it remained, as the two bands tossed insults back and forth and eventually came head to head in what was called ‘The Battle Of Britpop’. ‘Country House’ versus ‘Roll With It’ for the number one spot. The country was divided into teams; the two bands acted like rival armies, as if this were life or death, and all for what? Damon Albarn to later say he hated that song anyway?
Blur won the battle but seemed to lose the war, given that if Albarn could wipe any of their albums from history, he’d get rid of The Great Escape, which housed their victorious single. “I wouldn’t stand it up as a great work of art, but it’s what came out of that time of our lives,” he said to NME on reflection.
Perhaps the immature days of boyish arguments tainted it, as now, Albarn seems to only hear that record as a childish thing that he has to constantly face up to. “We are responsible for it. You can’t eradicate it. It’s out there forever now,” he said, realising how tough the logistics would be as he continued, “It would take an awful lot of going round to people’s houses and demanding their copies of it. So you’ve got to accept that it exists.”
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