‘Parklife’: the Blur single that perfectly encapsulates Britpop
Whenever you hear a blast of “All the people/ so many people”, it’s as if you can intrinsically feel yourself being jostled about in the world’s rowdiest pub, with the stench of beer being tossed in the air and having nothing but a good time. This is Britpop.
Of course, it might seem counterintuitive to some to define an entire musical movement on something entirely non-musical, but in a lot of ways, you can imagine the overlords of Britpop would rather be remembered by a feeling or emotion as opposed to one singular track. The beauty of Blur’s 1994 anthem ‘Parklife’ is that it masters both – a distinctive tune that will forever be hailed as the epitome of the genre, but stirring up the raucous rebellion of the everyman in its wake.
You only need to look so far as the single artwork for ‘Parklife’, simply emblazoned with a picture of a pint, to tell you everything you need to know, really. This was a tongue-in-cheek, razor-sharp celebration of all that it meant to be a guy in the depths of Britain in the 1990s – you may not have had a lot materially to your name, but that ultimately didn’t matter. You were here for a good time and not a huge amount else.
The irony is, however, that for a track in which Blur seemingly defined the exact feelings of a nation at a particular point in time, the song itself lacked a distinctive part of their footprint. Instead, that floor belonged to the actor Phil Daniels. As a born and bred Londoner who was no stranger to a gritty role or two, taking on the leading part of ‘Parklife’ was – quite literally – a walk in the park. But in the sheer act of Damon Albarn and Co deciding to take the back seat proved that this was part of their genius masterplan all along.
But what was Britpop without also being as smart and cocky as you like, all with a hint of true intellectualism running underneath it? ‘Parklife’ had that by the bucketload, too, straight from the opening line of: “Confidence is a preference for the habitual voyeur of what is known as (parklife).” It’s a sentiment that almost stops you in your tracks – without sounding condescending, it’s not what you expect from a song with a laddish ideal and even bigger bravado.
Yet the pinnacle of Britpop is precisely this. On one hand, yes, it’s all about pints in pubs and having a laugh. But the visionary minds behind it, not least Albarn, were not the blind leading the blind. They knew exactly what they were crafting in order to capture the attention of the world – putting a version of life previously left unsaid in music finally on the map, and doing it completely on their own terms. In which other era could you get away with devoting a whole song to the subject of dustmen, pigeons, and joggers? And not only that, but also make it a massive hit? Britpop, that’s what.
‘Parklife’ may mainly have been made for prime comedic effect, painting a larger-than-life people living their normal lives and slapping it with technicolour through song. But rather than contrived odes to romance or quite indulgent takes on introspection, it was truly embracing the world with both hands and celebrating that for all it was worth. At the time, in the mid-1990s, when things could be so stark, over in the land of Britpop, life was always a party.
