When Blur Peaked: 'Parklife' Tracks Ranked From Worst To Best
When discussing which camp I reside in when it comes to Blur vs Oasis, it’s safe to say I’m in Blur’s. I’ve written two album reviews of the band’s LPs (their bloated album The Great Escape and their underrated project Modern Life is Rubbish) and I frequently consult their hits when I’m on Spotify. Without a doubt Damon Albarn (lead singer/songwriter), Graham Coxon (lead guitarist), Alex James (bassist), and Dave Rowntree (drummer) have been responsible for some of the best pop music to have come out of Britain in the last 35 years.
Parklife, Blur’s third outing, is the result of the band’s vision to resurrect the Englishness in popular music being realised: so much so that it pioneered the subgenre of alternative rock, britpop. Drawing from legends of British rock music that include songwriters such as Paul Weller, Andy Partridge, Ray Davies, Syd Barrett, and David Bowie, Blur produced music that captivated and inspired the public to delirium despite their reliance on their influences at the early half of their career being overbearing at times.
Their 1994 release, that turns thirty this year, is Blur at their sunniest, sharpest, most melodic, and most successful regarding their execution of the music they wanted to release at any given point in their career. With the legacy of Parklife largely established and accepted, I didn’t want to write another album review waxing lyrical about it. Instead, I’ll do something more fun: I’ll rank the tracks from the album from worst to best because despite its great reputation, Albarn and co. did make some strange decisions concerning choice of singles and inclusions to the record that simply didn’t need to happen.
16: ‘Lot 105’
This song was included at the very end because the band felt ‘This is a Low’ was too “heavy” to close the LP on. What a mistake: this track has no business being included on the album. It’s atrocious.
15: ‘Trouble in the Message Centre’
Yeah, to be fair, I never took to ‘Trouble in the Message Centre’ when listening to Parklife from start to finish. I don’t know what it is: it has the hooks, it has the catchy rhythm, it has the “la la la la’s”, yet it still doesn’t hit the spot. Perhaps it’s too predictable: where it’s situated on the tracklist as well doesn’t help because it feels Blur was on autopilot on this song compared to the higher standard they set on the songs around it.
14: ‘Bank Holiday’
This is Blur channelling their appreciation for punk but it’s a skip for me. I appreciate how sonically this reflects the speedy doldrums of London living, with bank holidays only providing a momentary reprieve. But, it’s far from the band at their best on the LP.
13: ‘Far Out’
Bassist Alex James’s contribution to the album is cute. I don’t think it fits the theme of the project, but its melodicism, its space-inspired, trippy aesthetic is very cool, given it’s as psychedelic as Parklife gets.
12: ‘The Debt Collector’
You would expect the instrumental to be lower on the list, especially given the singles that came from this album, but it’s very good, a worthy inclusion on the LP. It breaks up an album that’s pretty relentless and upbeat in its music, prepping you for the second half of the project that absolutely rocks. The decision to scrap the Phil Daniels spoken word lyric idea for this song was a smart one.
11: ‘Tracy Jacks’
Parklife starts off like a rocket (more on the opening tracks later), and ‘Tracy Jacks’, the second song on the album, does have its fair share of enjoyment. The textures on the track are really good: Coxon’s thrashing guitar sounds conduct the four minute character study. There’s a great stucture to the song, and the only reason why it’s not higher on the list is that the next 10 tracks I’ll talk about on the LP are just that slightly more memorable, more catchy, more colourful sonically. Nevertheless, ‘Tracy Jacks’ is an underrated Blur song, for sure!
10: ‘End of a Century’
The third track off Parklife is very good, but it was never a single. Even the music video for this song demonstrate the strangeness of such a decision - the crew clearly didn’t have any ideas for such a track! I don’t know what the band members saw to consider ‘End of a Century’ as a single, but the song’s central idea is a fun one: it does present the realities of a long-term relationship in a sunny, melodic fashion.
9: ‘Badhead’
The chimy guitar line on this one is very endearing. The soundscape on ‘Badhead’ really encapsulates the nothingness, the listlessness that comes from having a sore head from the bender you had the night before. The vocal harmonies are a real delight: I wouldn’t be surprised if people were to play this song on loop, as it does have the “sleeper” hit vibe.
8: ‘To the End’
This single is perhaps Blur at their most classy, most elegant. It works by and large, but I’m not entirely sold by its French, femme fatale aesthetic. But, the band did take a risk and it does pay off more than it doesn’t, largely down to Albarn’s great vocal performance.
7: ‘London Loves’
The song that follows ‘To the End’ is a real banger. It has a devastating hook, and Albarn’s occasional sass really does help deliver on the witty portrayal of the miserable materialism and vanity that characterises London living (“London loves/the mystery of a speeding car”) It’s a real gem of a track.
6: ‘Magic America’
‘Magic America’ is like ‘Miss America’’s more catchy (there’s that word again), more clever, more successful cousin. Blur satirises the typical British obsession with the States on this song, and there’s a real bite to this track especially given the band’s poor touring history at the US. The band performs with confidence and swagger: this song really does demonstrate that Blur executed the vision they had for their music at this point that began with their Modern Life is Rubbish project.
5: ‘Clover Over Dover’
Yeah, Parklife really does finish strongly! ‘Clover Over Dover’ is a really quaint song, lyrically is quite goofy, yet the song really comes together so, so well. The harmonies, the harpsichord, the delightful guitar lines really blend together to make a really endearing, melodic lullaby about suicide (I know, I didn’t expect the sentence to end that way either). Stylistically, it’s really reminiscent of the sounds that characterised British psychedelia in the sixties, which I do have a soft spot for.
4: ‘Jubilee’
How ‘Jubilee’ wasn’t a single is beyond me (they even played it on Top of the Pops!). It’s a real romp, an example of Blur doing punk correctly. Coxon’s guitar hooks are unrelenting, helping the song zip by in a breathless three minutes. A stunning character study of a slacker that was in line with the nineties social milieu. ‘Jubilee’ is one of my favourite Blur songs, and one of the best deep cuts they’ve ever recorded.
3: ‘Parklife’
The title track is a britpop classic. It may be overplayed, but it encapsulates the album - you can’t ask any more from a title track. Phil Daniels’s spoken word verses brilliantly contrast the melodic chorus that Albarn rides with real aplomb. It’s ‘Parklife’ - there’s nothing more to be said.
2: ‘Girls & Boys’
Parklife’s opener is another classic. The disco-inspired number is wonderful. For a long time, I used to think that the song was a bit too long (it’s five minutes), but relistening to it, there are so many great elements to the track that its length is very much justified. Coxon’s manipulation of his guitar sounds are brilliant, giving the song a distinct, edgy character, whilst Albarn’s lyrics are prophetic in a sense even though he’s satirising the frivolity of nineties hook-up culture. This hook-laden song inspired the great Thom Yorke into jealousy: that’s no mean feat.
1: ‘This is a Low’
It’s safe to say Parklife is bookended very well (if we pretend ‘Lot 105’ doesn’t exist). ‘This is a Low’ is an emphatic closer. The tinges of psychedelia is a real treat, Coxon’s acoustic guitar riff is ridiculously good, and the lyrics, though superficially a weather report, portrays the isolation and loneliness that can plague those who live in England very well. Albarn’s performance as well give the lyrics a sense of the epic, which helps to sell the song’s magnitude. ‘This is a Low’ is simply Blur’s finest album closer.