It’s kinda funny but I remember the first time I heard about Blur more than the first time I actually heard one of their songs.
I was hanging out with my brother and a kid from down our road and I distinctly remember our friend saying “oh I like that new Blur song, Parklife.”
We were only sat in front of the TV at the time (and I can’t even remember what were watching), so there’s absolutely no reason that something so innocuous should still be lodged in my brain, but lodged there it is.
Maybe it stuck because I had no idea who Blur were and I felt left out of the conversation? Maybe it stuck because I found the word ‘Parklife’ so intriguing? All I know is that in that brief little moment I made a mental note to find out more about Blur and I guess the rest they say is history. I was about to fall in love.
Blur
Blur have soundtracked my life ever since I first taped Parklife onto a TDK-90 around Christmas ’94. They’ve been with me through the good times, the bad times and all there’s been in between. To be honest, I think I use Blur as a coping mechanism, they just keep me grounded.
Whilst I’ve been writing this I’ve started to wonder if there’s ever been a week in the last 30 years or so where I haven’t listened at least one to one of their songs. Their music just seems so ever-present between my ears. Obviously that sounds like an unlikely exaggeration, but my love for Blur shows no signs of letting up.
I’ve had a look at my Spotify Wrapps from the last few years (yeah, I know) and it’s no surprise to see Blur so well represented. In 2023 Blur were my 3rd most listened to artist of the year. In 2024 they were 2nd, and last year they were at the top spot. What was even madder about last year was that Damon’s side project The Good, The Bad and The Queen were also in my top 5, and considering how often my son and I also put on some Gorillaz in the car I was quite taken aback that Damon wasn’t also represented on that front. He just has too many songs.
The 100 Club
After David Bowie passed away I saw a tweet where someone said that they reckoned David Bowie must’ve written over a hundred bangers. I think the word “bangers” was slightly misjudged, but I knew what they meant. Anyway, it got me thinking at the time if there were any other artists I admired who also might’ve racked up a hundred or so songs of note (apart from The Beatles, obviously) and it was Damon Albarn and Blur who were the first ones to pop into my head.
I wrote about this a few years ago when Parklife turned 25 and I shared a playlist of my 100 favourite Blur songs at the time.
Amazingly, Blur went on to release another album since I put that together (The Ballad of Darren) and I had to go back and update my playlist because the songs from that record were even better than ones that came before it (The Magic Whip).
But all of that’s what the point is not.
The point is that Damon is more than Blur. He’s a super-songwriter and a national treasure and I don’t think that enough of us pay him enough respect for the music that he’s made outside of the band that made him a household name.
And that needs to change.
Gorillaz
This may seem mental, but the recent release of the latest Gorillaz album, The Mountain, means that Damon has now made as many Gorillaz albums as he has with Blur. That’s 9 studio albums apiece, and a hell of lot of songs and noteworthy collaborations to boot.
Going off topic slightly, but the list of people that Damon Albarn has enticed to work with on Gorillaz records is beyond ridiculous; Mick Jones and Paul Simonon of The Clash, Beck, De La Soul, Snoop Dog, Mark E. Smith, Robert Smith, Gruff Rhys, Noel Gallagher, Shaun Ryder, Stevie Nicks, Bobby Womack, Mos Def, Neneh Cherry, Roots Manuva, Little Simz, MF Doom, Tame Impala, Andre 3000, James Murphy, Johnny Marr, Peter Hook, Dennis Hopper, Elton John, St. Vincent, Idles, Sparks and even Lou-fucking-Reed have all lent their services to the Gorillaz project. I haven’t even named them all but you get the idea.
It helps that Gorillaz have an audience in America and have sold a bucket load of records across the world, but that’s all down to Damon and his craft. If artists of that calibre feel that Gorillaz are worthy of their time, then why aren’t Gorillaz as worthy of ours? It makes me wonder why Gorillaz aren’t taken more seriously than they are, well certainly amongst my group of friends anyway.
Demon Days obviously got it’s flowers back in 2005 and was rightly lauded (by critics at least) as being the benchmark of what Damon could achieve with Gorillaz, but I thought Plastic Beach (2010) was just as good (if not better), and that Cracker Island (2023) was also a highly underrated collection of songs. To my ears Oil, Silent Running and Skinny Ape (from Cracker Island) are as good as anything Damon made in the early days of Gorillaz.
Latest album The Mountain also appears to be gaining some traction as being something of a return to form. Written following the passing of both Damon’s and (Gorillaz co-founder) Jamie Hewlett’s fathers, The Mountain sees Damon in a more reflective nature than we’re usually used to with Gorillaz. I can’t be the only one who wonders how Damon knows if a song he’s written is for Blur, Gorillaz or something else, but the subject of death certainly involves a level of maturity and vulnerability that you wouldn’t necessarily associate with a cartoon pop act. I think it’s great that he’s chosen the Gorillaz as the vehicle to share his response to his father’s passing with the world. Grief shouldn’t be taboo.
“You know the hardest thing” he sings on Orange County, “is to say goodbye to someone you love. That’s the hardest thing.” It’s such a simple and obvious thing to say following a loved one’s death, but not everyone would think to put those words to song. Just like he achieved on his fabulously universal lyric on Blur’s Tender, Damon is able to say the simplest thing like “love’s the greatest thing” and it not come across as corny or insincere. If anything, I think it’s the opposite.
Of course not every record he makes hit’s the mark. The sheer quantity of music and side projects that he has on the go means that he always runs the risk of serving up a folly every now and then. Damon can also be a bit of a numpty with some of the things he says, (especially about other artists) and I think that one day that might become his downfall. But I’m here today to love and not to judge. I think that Damon is always at his best when he’s in song. and on that front I think the man’s a genius.
The Good, The Bad and The Queen
Let’s be clear, The Good, The Bad and The Queen is an awful name for band. My understanding is that it was never meant to actually be the name of the band but it just stuck after they used the name of one of their songs as the title for the first album.
I liked that first album when it came out in 2007, but I didn’t revisit it often. It was a little too cold for me and I felt that it lacked a little bit of magic that Damon often sprinkles on his songs. In the end, so much time had passed since that first album and the follow up in 2018 that I wasn’t really arsed about giving it a listen. How foolish I was.
I can’t exactly put my finger on the reasons why it affected me so, but there was just something about The Good, the Bad and The Queen’s Merrie Land that absolutely bewitched me last year. I guess I just stumbled across it at the right time as that particular set of songs was exactly what I needed in 2025. Merrie Land certainly had more humour and heart than the first record, and it clearly didn’t take itself as seriously. Maybe that was the little bit of Damon Albarn magic that I felt their first record was lacking. Merrie Land was still quaint, quirky, and slightly ridiculous (much like it’s predecessor), but at certain moments it was also absolutely beautiful.
I’ll say it loud and proud, Drifters & Trawlers, The Poison Tree and Lady Boston are amongst some of the best songs that Damon Albarn has ever written. Lady Boston is particularly brilliant and I could probably write a whole blog post just on that song alone. I’ll spare you that for now, but I will share a link to a page that explains a little bit more about the song…
Lady Boston by The Good, the Bad & the Queen – Songfacts
The inspiration and meaning behind Lady Boston is definitely worthy of a little background reading. It’s not often I trawl the internet for the meaning of a song, but in the case of Lady Boston I think the context really adds to it. I was also desperate to know what the Welsh choir were singing at the end of the song as it really is a hair raising moment of music.
I’d also argue that the lyric, “if this is the end, the line in the sand, the blue dressing room bell, is ringing the lord he wishes the head of the whale, who lives under the ice, ’till shipping lanes sliced open the North Pole, leaving a great hole” isn’t just song writing, I think it’s poetry.
The official video to Lady Boston is pretty awful and doesn’t do the song justice at all, but I need to share it here regardless.
Just close your eyes and be transported to another time and place.
Talking about another time and place. My mum once sent me a local newspaper clipping about Damon after he was snapped in a greasy spoon in my home town of Pitsea, Essex. I think the story said that he’d been to visit Wat Tyler County Park to make some field recordings for what we now know was the follow up to Demon Days, but when I got my copy of Plastic Beach home and read the liner notes it was easy to connect the dots and realise that he’d actually been to Pitsea tip to record some seagulls for the opening track of the album. I guess he didn’t want to stay on the train from London for too long and go as far as Old Leigh or Southend.
I didn’t care one jot.
I’d moved away from Essex by this point but I absolutely loved the thought of Damon Albarn walking through my hometown and recording some Pitsea seagulls. It’s also kind of thrilling to me that to get to the greasy spoon cafe that Damon was photographed in he’d have had to have crossed my parent’s road, literally a stones throw from the bedroom where I grew up listening to so much of his music.
Anyway, I’m waffling on and I need to draw this love letter to a close.
I was 11 years old when I discovered Blur and this coming Sunday I’ll be taking my 11 year old son to his first ever gig, the Gorillaz on The Mountain tour in Liverpool. To say I’m excited is beyond words.. He already loves the band and I’m really hoping this gig may lead him on to his own musical journey. I’m already welling up at the thought.
Anyway, Bowie and The Beatles might’ve written over 100 great songs, Bob Dylan and Neil Young too. Hell, Macca has probably written over 200 songs of note, but when it comes to great British songwriters Damon Albarn can’t be far behind that tally. I’m not saying he’s better than any of those guys but you’ve got to give the man some credit, especially on his birthday.
So thank you Damon.
Thanks for Blur, Gorillaz and all the songs in between.
You are my medicine when you’re close to me.
And I love ya.
Cheers.
It wouldn’t be a post of mine without some kind of MCU-esque post credit waffle. Consider it a reward for sticking this through to the end.
I’ve made a tidy playlist of what I think are some of Damon’s best songs from the last 25 years or so. I’ve bookended it with a couple of Blur songs for some sort of serenity, and I also need to point out that I’m drawn to the sadder stuff (so I’ve left out the obvious Gorillaz hits), but it’s a great showcase of his talent as a songwriter nonetheless.
I’d also like to share a couple of Damon related YouTube hits. I made a longer playlist of my favourite vids but I couldn’t figure out how to share it, so these’ll have to do. Enjoy!
Sitting Up Straight 