"Let Blur bash their way on towards the margins," Steve Sutherland wrote defensively in a 2000 issue of NME. And the choice was loaded. Think I'm exaggerating? Just read some of the reviews of their last two greatest-hits collections, 2000's Best of Blur and 2009's Midlife, both of which favored their later stuff. Up until now, listeners have been urged to take one of two positions: 1) "Great pop band, until they went to America and sold out!" or 2) "The early stuff is too British, but I love all that weird shit they did later on." There was a sense that you couldn't love it all- the witty, theatrical, Kinks-inspired character sketches perfected on 1994's Parklife and the impressionistic elegies of their 1999 sad-bastard masterstroke, 13. It's not despite but because of these pivots and complexities that it feels appropriate to call Blur a defining band of the past two decades. Three years on, he was a bit more forgiving (one more time, with earnestness: "Look inside America/ She's alright/ She's alright"). Another? In 1994, Damon Albarn wrote a snide little number about the cultural allure of the West (sneeringly: "La-la-la-la-la/ He'd like to live in Magic America/ With all the magic people"). When asked on radio what they thought of the new Seattle sound, Graham Coxon said, "I fucking hate it." Later he'd be the one to lead the band toward a post-grunge, indie-tinged sound, a nugget of which will be blared alongside "Smells Like Teen Spirit" at sports arenas until the end of time. They rarely move in straight lines. One example of many: Blur arrived in New York for the first time on the day Nevermind was released. That's what happens to bands that house four egos and a pair of dueling geniuses. Blur have been a band for 21 years, and their story is long enough to speak a bunch of contradictions. (And before you answer this next one know that the Queen is watching.) Choose Britain. Choose Ray Davies, choose Stephen Malkmus choose la-la-la or wooo-hoo. Choose fame, or flee from it fast as you can in a milkman's suit. Choose your own worst NME: a Gallagher, any Gallagher, or maybe just yourself ("Do you feel like a chain store? Practically floored?"). Go pop, then spend a decade slowly deflating study the songbook so you can tear it up with precision. Choose Damien Hirst's cheekily agit-pop country house or Sophie Muller's teen-spirit-stinking squat.
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