“It’s closer”: The Blur song Damon Albarn said out-Beatled Oasis
It goes without saying that Oasis were open fans of The Beatles. Looking through every one of their albums, Noel Gallagher worshipped the ground that John Lennon and Paul McCartney helped pave in their early days, and it wasn’t hard to see him working some of his biggest influences into the songs, even if it was blatant like on ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’. But if there was one thing they had an equal passion for besides the Fab Four, it was dragging people through the mud that they thought didn’t deserve to stand by their side.
And when talking about the biggest artists of the time, Noel normally had a lot to say whenever it came to Blur. He may have started his career being fairly tame towards them before Oasis had formed, but as soon as the band started being cagey with each other about their releases, it didn’t take long for Noel’s fangs to come out, eventually spreading the vicious comment saying that he hoped that Damon Albarn would catch Aids and die.
It was a fairly brutal shot towards his adversaries, but the root of the problem had more to do with the overarching feud of Britpop. There was a unique difference between what made Albarn and Noel want to write songs. Additionally, listening to how each of them approached their craft, there was a massive class divide as well, with many being able to identify with Albarn’s odes to emotional dysfunction rather than Noel’s soaring optimism.
Oasis may have won the Britpop War by the end of the 1990s, but Albarn made sure to make it a close fight. He ultimately managed to shed his Britpop skin completely once he started working with Jamie Hewlett on Gorillaz, but after going as far as he could with his traditional sound on The Great Escape, it was time to experiment, and the band’s self-titled record was the first time fans got to see some other sides of the man.
But, really, a lot of the tunes that ended up becoming singles from the album started off as piss-takes. As much as ‘Song 2’ has become one of the band’s most enduring classics, the whole thing began life as an elongated joke to mock what grunge music was supposed to be. And while ‘Beetlebum’ did have a catchier melody, Albarn made sure that there were a few silent jabs back at Noel as well.
The song itself already sounded a bit like Oasis’ brand of Britpop, but Albarn wanted to make sure that he outdid Noel at his own game, saying, “I thought the most unfashionable thing for us to come back with was a song that sounded like The Beatles. I want Noel to listen to ‘Beetlebum’ and realise that it is… closer.” And it’s not like he didn’t have good reason for saying that, either.
Some pieces of the song could have been ripped directly out of John Lennon’s playbook during the FAB Four’s prime, but after those jabs in the press, the Gallaghers were far from resentful of Albarn. They had already conquered the world at Knebworth, and when they heard that their favourite punching bags had written a song that sounded like The Beatles, they were secretly listening to the track and calling it one of their favourite songs that Blur ever wrote.
That may have been a back-handed compliment at the time, but Noel did end up coming around to Blur, eventually performing with Gorillaz on numerous occasions, including collaborating on a track from the Humanz album, and even appearing onstage when Albarn did tunes like ‘Beetlebum’ live. The whole purpose of the tune may have been to put someone in their place, but rarely has a song that was created out of spite like this resulted in the two parties forming a friendship.
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