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End Of A Century: How Blur “Sorted The Art Of Songwriting”
London Red carpet / Alamy Stock Photo
In Depth

End Of A Century: How Blur “Sorted The Art Of Songwriting”

Evidence of Damon Albarn’s development as a songwriter, End Of A Century was as musically ambitious as it was lyrically arresting.

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A little under a year passed between the release of Blur’s bold second album, Modern Life Is Rubbish, and its all-conquering follow-up, Parklife. Yet in the months that preceded Parklife’s release, as Blur split their time between a gruelling touring schedule supporting their current record and intense studio hours recording their new one, there was, bassist Alex James later recalled in the Blur documentary No Distance Left To Run, “a sense that something was happening. That we were developing.” Among the many career-making songs that would feature on Parklife there was one clear indicator of this: End Of A Century, a track which Blur’s then producer, Stephen Street, would hear as evidence of the group’s frontman, Damon Albarn, “getting the art of songwriting really sorted”.

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The backstory: “The band were pretty much in their own little bubble”

Where Blur’s debut album, 1991’s Leisure, had found the group looking for a place within the fading indie-dance crossover scene, typified by the looped beats and lightly acid-fried “Madchester” bands coming out of the North of England, with Modern Life Is Rubbish the group took on a new role, putting themselves in a lineage of classic British bands – Small Faces, The Kinks – whose observational songs astutely yet lovingly satirised their homeland’s culture. “The band were pretty much in their own little bubble at this point,” Stephen Street told Uncut magazine years later, speaking of the four musicians’ close-knit bond and the single-minded persistence with which they chased down their new material.

Boisterous songs such as Girls & Boys and Parklife’s title track were built to demand attention, but nestled among these were ballads such as End Of A Century which proved that, as much as they were mastering the brash pop statement, the group were also honing their ability to craft sophisticated songs that were as musically ambitious as they were lyrically arresting.

The recording: “We were having fun with genres”

As with much of the band’s material, End Of A Century was demoed by Albarn and worked up in the studio by the group, with aid from Street. “We were having fun with genres all the time,” the producer told Stuart Maconie, for the Blur biography 3862 Days. “We’d discuss the vibe we wanted on each track… Let’s be Bowie here. Let’s have a Numan or Magazine vibe here, or a New Romantic feel.” End Of A Century inspired a Kinks-like approach, with a “stripped-down feel; one guitar in each speaker” deemed the best support for Albarn’s lyrics.

The song’s opening line, “She said there’s ants in the carpet,” came from an observation that Albarn’s then girlfriend, Justine Frischmann, made of the flat the pair shared in Kensington, in West London. From there, Albarn widened his lens to look at the way long-term couples can find their lives being overtaken by routine. They “get into staying in and staring at each other”, he told Maconie. “Only instead of candlelight, it’s the TV light.” Yet if he disapproves, Albarn isn’t saying. Rather, there’s empathy in the chorus, which soars with Beatles-y backing vocals from guitarist Graham Coxon, as Albarn acknowledges the safety that, deep down, everyone seeks in a relationship: “We all say, don’t want to feel alone/We wear the same clothes, ’cause we feel the same.” Greeting their slow-down the same way they greet the unknown of a new era, his couple force a nonchalant shrug: “End of a century, oh, it’s nothing special.”

The release and legacy: “The sound of adolescent recklessness”

With a simple mix of organ, Coxon’s characteristically fuzzed-up guitar and even a brief, elegiac trombone solo, End Of A Century gave the intimate concerns of Albarn’s characters a cinematic grandeur that made listeners feel as though their own day-to-day worries were being seen. Released as Parklife’s fourth and final single, on 7 November 1994, the song went to No.19 in the UK charts, boosted by record-buyers drawn to what Britpop historian John Harris, writing in his book The Last Party, called “the sound of adolescent recklessness colliding with the encroaching demands of one’s mid-20s”.

In the years since, End Of A Century has endured well into the 2020s, finding a place in Blur’s setlists as the group toured in support of their 2023 album, The Ballad Of Darren. Albarn may have updated its lyrics on occasion – the mind has, at times, gotten dirty “as you get closer to 50” – but the song needs no fine-tuning to continue to connect with both band and fans alike.

“I love playing this live because of the big, anthemic brass section in the chorus,” drummer Dave Rowntree once shared. And crowds love singing it back, belting the lyrics for all their worth. It is, after all, something special.

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