Deep Album Cuts Vol. 330: Blur





 










Back in July when Blur released its ninth album The Ballad of Darren, I ranked the band's albums for Spin, and while I was poring over their catalog I hashed out this playlist.

Blur album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. Sing
2. High Cool
3. Advert
4. Villa Rosie
5. This Is A Low
6. Bank Holiday
7. London Loves
8. Globe Alone
9. He Thought Of Cars
10. Country Sad Ballad Man
11. Chinese Bombs
12. Movin' On
13. Trimm Trabb
14. B.L.U.R.E.M.I.
15. Bugman
16. We've Got A File On You
17. Brothers And Sisters
18. Ghost Ship
19. My Terracotta Heart
20. The Heights
21. Russian Strings

Tracks 1 and 2 from Leisure (1991)
Tracks 3 and 4 from Modern Life Is Rubbish (1993)
Tracks 5, 6 and 7 from Parklife (1994)
Tracks 8 and 9 from The Great Escape (1995)
Tracks 10, 11 and 12 from Blur (1997)
Tracks 13, 14 and 15 from 13 (1999)
Tracks 16 and 17 from Think Tank (2003)
Tracks 18 and 19 from The Magic Whip (2015)
Tracks 20 and 21 from The Ballad Of Darren (2023)

For a long time I kind of underestimated Blur. I only heard "Girls And Boys" and "Country House" on the radio and on 120 Minutes a handful of times while hearing about how they were one of the biggest bands in the UK and the whole thing kind of mystified be. Then "Song 2" came out and I really liked that and "Beetlebum," but it felt like a pretty abrupt about-face from their earlier sound. Now, though, I respect that Blur are kind of an inherently restless band who switched up their aesthetic several times. 

"Sing" was, of course, made famous by its appearance on the Trainspotting soundtrack, even though it really sounds nothing like the rest of Blur's first album. "Villa Rosie" amuses me because they had a song that opened with a goofy "woohoo!" refrain years before "Song 2." The song "We've Got A File On You" always reminds me of the Stereogum column named after it, which I recently got to write an installment of. 
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