The moment Blur were on the brink of breaking up: “Such a depressing album”
Not every great band has the capacity to last forever. Some might call it a day after only one or two albums, but for Blur to have survived their original run as a group for seven records feels somewhat miraculous, all things considered.
Now, there are many people who are going to look at those opening lines and immediately disagree, intent on informing me that Blur were never a great band, and that there were plenty of other superior acts within the entire Britpop movement. The trouble is, Blur, and virtually all other acts lumped in with the label, were never really a Britpop act, and when it comes to determining the true winners of the ‘Battle of Britpop’, Oasis somehow managed to finish second in a race only they cared about.
With this pyrrhic victory coming courtesy of ‘Country House’ hitting number one in the UK charts ahead of ‘Roll With It’, Blur had inadvertently drunk from a poisoned chalice that had people pigeonholing them into a world that they weren’t too comfortable with. The songs on The Great Escape were more commercially accessible when compared to their previous work, even though songs from Parklife, such as the title track and ‘Girls and Boys’, had a reasonable amount of cultural ubiquity, and for one member of the band in particular, this seemed like a complete reversal of the band’s identity.
Guitarist Graham Coxon had never wanted to settle for being a pop star and was far more concerned with keeping his own artistic integrity intact. He’d wanted to take Blur in a completely different direction from where they ended up on their fourth studio album, released in 1995, and rapidly started to lose interest in being part of the band if his intentions weren’t going to be taken seriously.
Of course, Coxon was persuaded to remain within the band, and they took on a much rawer direction on their fifth album, their self-titled 1997 effort, which took a much larger amount of inspiration from the American underground. They’d go one step further into experimental territory on their sixth album, 13, which was released in 1999, and around this time, during an interview with Time Out, Coxon had reached a point where he was able to candidly reflect on how this treacherous point in the mid-1990s had almost driven the band apart.
“After touring The Great Escape. Damon [Albarn] thought I wasn’t interested, and I thought he was insane and had turned into Tommy Steele,” he claimed, referring to the ‘50s rock and roll icon who famously withdrew from performing despite his notoriety. However, he went on to explain that there were greater underlying issues that needed to be addressed within the band, and that he and Albarn needed to improve their own relationship. “In fact, we were just exhausted and had stopped communicating. That’s why The Great Escape is such a depressing album.”
It is perhaps one of Blur’s most divisive efforts, and one that, while bringing great fortune, is regarded as something of a black sheep in their discography. The songwriting is by no means dreadful or a step down, but it was aiming to turn Blur into something that they were never meant to be, and the renewed focus on their artistry that came afterwards ultimately helped prolong their existence as a band.
