‘Parklife’: A Track-By-Track Guide To Every Song On Blur’s Breakthrough Album

Tracy Jacks

Something of a companion song to Pressure On Julian, from Modern Life Is Rubbish, Tracy Jacks charts another crack-up of a middle-aged man – in this case, a golf-loving civil-service drone who greets his 40s by fleeing to the seaside town of Walton-on-the-Naze, throwing his clothes in the ocean and running around naked until the police take him home. Oh, and then he bulldozes his house to the ground. An opening keyboard burble hints at Jacks’ coastal tantrum – the first of many neat tricks deployed throughout the song, among them a dizzying Alex James bassline that approximates a code-red meltdown, and sympathetic strings that acknowledge how private crises can take on epic proportions for the individual suffering them.

End Of A Century

Another cinematic take on small-life experiences, End Of A Century looks at how the razzle-dazzle of early romance inevitably gives way to homebound routine and “glowing in a huddle” in front of the telly. “We all say, don’t want to be alone/We wear the same clothes ’cause we feel the same” Albarn sings of long-term couples who find comfort in familiarity. Rather than sneer, he extends compassionate understanding on a song whose Kinks influence is writ large, from a stately trombone solo to Graham Coxon’s high backing vocals and a key change that recognises there can be grandeur in everyday living.

Parklife

From domestic bubble to public greenery: on Parklife’s title track, Albarn’s protagonist enjoys the small outdoors, taking a stroll, watching joggers and generally finding contentment in the little things life has to offer. Another song recorded early in the album sessions, Parklife had been honed on tour but truly came together in the studio after Blur drafted actor Phil Daniels in to narrate the song in his inimitable Cockney accent. The sounds of smashing glass, barking dogs and saxophone practice help create a sense of suburban community, but it’s the singalong chorus that united the UK when Parklife was released as a single in the summer of 1994, cementing Blur’s crossover success and crowning them the reigning kings of Britpop.

Bank Holiday

A punky thrash the likes of which Blur love to chuck into the mix (see Song 2, from Blur; B.L.U.R.E.M.I., from 13; We’ve Got A File On You, from Think Tank), Bank Holiday celebrates that uniquely British Monday which, six times a year, gives many of the population a reprieve from work. The loutish delivery reflects what is often seen as an excuse for a day-long session down the boozer.

Badhead

Fittingly placed after Bank Holiday, Badhead carries all the reflection of a morning after, sung with all the weariness of someone nursing a hangover. As if watching the couple at the heart of End Of The Century calcify, the song addresses the distance that can grow between people who are struggling to communicate (“So far, I’ve not really stayed in touch/Well, you knew as much”), and the malaise that sets in when there’s “a lack of anything to do” except, so the chorus suggests, avoid arguing with each other. Horns and keyboard filigree add ornate touches to an otherwise straightforward ballad that sees out Parklife’s first act.

The Debt Collector

This waltz-time instrumental was initially the tune earmarked for Phil Daniels’ vocals, until Albarn struggled to come up with any lyrics that fit. Marking Parklife’s midway point, it performs the same function as Intermission on Modern Life Is Rubbish, clearing the way for a second half featuring some of the album’s more leftfield material. A loose, intimate performance makes good on Graham Coxon’s wish to create something Tom Waits might have placed on one of his Island Records albums.

Far Out

Credited solely to Alex James, Far Out was, in its original incarnation, a hopped-up collision of distorted guitars, keyboard bloops and clattering drums that was even more inscrutable than the curio it became on Parklife. Leaning into lyrics which namecheck the moons of Saturn, Jupiter and Uranus, along with a litany of stars (“Vega, Capella, Hadar, Rigel, Barnard’s Star/Antares, Aldebaran, Altair/Wolf 359/Betelgeuse”) and an echoed fade-out on the word “Sun”, the band frame James’ vocals with space-age keys, acoustic guitar and conga, resulting in one of the more unusual one minute and 38 seconds in Blur’s pre-13 catalogue.

To The End

On Closet Romantic, the song Damon Albarn contributed to the Trainspotting soundtrack in 1996, Albarn intoned the James Bond movie titles over a homemade keyboard shuffle. On To The End, he proved that he could create songs that stood among the best Bond themes if he wanted to. Widescreen strings, looped drums, vibraphone and seductive French-language interjections (courtesy of Stereolab’s Lætitia Sadier) help create the ambitious sonic palette; lyrics that chronicle the unexplained “end” in a relationship – dissolution? Survival through tough times? – belie all assertions that Albarn hid his emotions behind character studies. One of the best Blur songs to date, To The End received deserved single release, introduced a new facet of the band’s songwriting, and was swiftly re-recorded (as To The End (La Comedie)) with Françoise Hardy, adding extra Gallic pathos to a song already saturated in it.

London Loves

If Parklife’s title track bursts with all-in-it-together bonhomie, London Loves is inner-city isolation topped off with creeping unease in a metropolis that “loves the misery of a speeding heart” and looks on dispassionately as “people just fall apart”. Albarn’s then recently acquired Yamaha QY10 accounts for the squelchy stutter that underpins the track, while Coxon looks to Robert Fripp’s work on David Bowie’s Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps) album for some atonal guitar squalls the likes of which he would unleash to ear-piercing effect three decades later, on St. Charles Square, from The Ballad Of Darren. A closing snippet of a Greater London Radio traffic report only adds to the feeling of being lost in the urban sprawl.

Trouble In The Message Centre

Dislocation becomes disconnection in Trouble In The Message Centre, Albarn’s detached delivery enhancing lyrics that have a cut-up feel, but which were taken from phrases he encountered during his stay at the Wellington Hotel in New York City while Blur toured the US in late 1993 (“local and direct” and “room to room” were call options on a telephone; “strike him softly, away from the body” was printed on a book of matches). Parsing any clear meaning is a fool’s errand: there’s the nine-to-five grind (“I am a manager/And I am in control”), allusions to chemical imbalance (“You can’t remember ten minutes ago”) and intimations of irrelevance (“You’re past your sell-by date”), to which Coxon adds a slashing guitar solo that only serves to further the song’s destabilising effect.

Clover Over Dover

As if telling of the fate that could have befallen – or perhaps later did befall – Tracy Jacks, Clover Over Dover takes as its jumping-off point the bawdy World War II-era ditty Roll Me Over In The Clover and transports it from countryside to cliff edge. Harpsichord, winding guitar lines and double-tracked vocals create a dream-like state for this “cautionary tale for you” which leaves the intimation of death by suicide an open question: passing thought or tragic reality? Blur finally played the song live for the first time in 2019, during a surprise appearance at Albarn’s Africa Express event in Leytonstone, East London.

Magic America

Blur’s love-hate relationship with the US continues. Their first-ever stateside tour, carried out in support of the Leisure album, had nearly broken them. But if Miss America, on Modern Life Is Rubbish, cast a disappointed glance at what could have been, Magic America takes an altogether more scathing look at Brits who fall for the American Dream. “Sugar-free” air and “love on Channel 44” prove seductive for Albarn’s protagonist, Bill Barrett, but the song itself is defiantly English, right down to the “la-la” chorus and the children’s-TV keyboard solo Albarn throws in at the two-minute mark.

Jubilee

The butane-sniffing, sofa-slouching life of teenager Jubilee – named for his birth year, 1977, in which Queen Elizabeth II celebrated her Silver Jubilee – is up for examination on this Bowie-like stomper, complete with glammy sax skronk and a solo played on a Revenger sound-effects box. No prizes for working out that 1977 was also the year punk went overground, which explains the bratty outburst that is this short, sharp outsider-character sketch.

This Is A Low

Proof if ever it were needed that, with Parklife, Blur were hitting new heights. In his band biography, 3862 Days, Stuart Maconie describes This Is A Low’s pained completion, from meticulously crafted backing track – looped backwards drums, layers of acoustic and electric guitars – to near rejection when Albarn couldn’t settle on any lyrics beyond the song’s title. Eventually, not long past midnight on a February morning, mere hours before a hernia operation, he found inspiration in a handkerchief, gifted to him by Alex James, depicting the regions reported on in BBC Radio’s shipping forecast. Elliptical lyrics (“Hit traffic on the Dogger Bank/Up the Thames to find a taxi rank”) make the perfect accompaniment for the somnambulant backing track, while Albarn’s chorus hook – “This is a low/But it won’t hurt you” – offers hope to anyone cast adrift in their own nighttime woes. As the final song proper on Parklike, it was a majestic way to bow out.

Lot 105

One minute 19 seconds of frolicksome Hammond organ, rubbery bass and ska-like guitar, seen out with a tried-and-tested “la-la” chant, brings Parklife to its official close – a boisterous, slightly cocky outro from a group who deserved to swagger out of the studio after completing what remains one of the best albums of the 90s.

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