The Story Behind The Song: Blur’s powerhouse joke ‘Song 2’
The trajectory of Blur becomes murky after the Britpop explosion. While the band started well before the lads from Manchester, Oasis, began making the rounds in England, their satirical nods to British irony fit right in among the cool Britannia going on at the time, putting the band in a grudge match with Oasis for the top spot. Once the Britpop bubble burst with the release of Oasis’ record Be Here Now, the hunt was on to find something new to bring to the table. ‘Song 2’ may have given the band a second wind at the time, but the whole thing originated as an in-joke.
When talking about the tune’s origins, guitarist Graham Coxon remembered it all getting started with Damon Albarn on guitar, playing the beginnings of the track on an acoustic with the identifiable “woo-hoos” with whistles. Since it had such a sing-song melody behind it, Coxon had the idea of making the track dirty and messing with the tone, cranking it in the studio live in the room with the gain on the guitars up. By the time they finished recording the tune, the band had thought it would be funny to launch that as the single.
Speaking to Q, bassist Alex James remembered the session through haze of a putrid hangover. “I remember having a really bad sweaty hangover that day,” he said. “And it was very sunny. We were at Mayfair Studios, Primrose Hill, and I’d been trying to think of a title for a TV show a friend was doing about rock wives. Then it came to me: ‘Hits and Mrs!’ So I thought that was my work for the day over. It sums up ‘Song 2’ really.”
James supports Coxon’s retelling of the track’s conception too. “We didn’t think about it at all,” he continued. “Graham set up two kits, Dave and Graham started playing drums at the same time, this real ‘aggro’ beat. Then the chorus is two distorted basses and Damon’s guide vocal. It was kind of a throwback. We’d always done brainless rocking out, though maybe it’s not what we’re known for.”
As it was played to their record label, Coxon remembered the band laughing throughout the whole proceeding, telling Produce Like a Pro: “Let’s tell the record label that we want to release it a single. Sort of scare them to death. They’ll hate it. That’s what they did. They came in, and we played it to them giggling, and they were like, ‘wow this is excellent’”.
The final version of what fans hear on the record is also Albarn’s scratch take of the number, recorded live in the room with the band playing the tune in the studio. The one element that was layered in afterwards was an additional drum by Coxon, starting off playing the tom-toms at the beginning and creating a loop out of it that runs until the tune’s end. There is also a fair bit of humour in the title, referring to the fact that it was to be the second song on the record and clocking in at 2:02.
Times were also changing in the world of rock, and some of the lyrics were meant to be a send-up of the legendary genre that came before Britpop: grunge. Though Britpop musicians like Noel Gallagher had a healthy respect for the likes of Kurt Cobain, Albarn uses this tune to beat the sound of Seattle at its own game, creating an anthem that blends in with their aesthetic and poked merciless fun at the genre.
In a similar style to the grunge bands of the time, the lyrics are entirely disposable, more or less following what the instrumentation is doing and compiling nonsense phrases, much like Nirvana used to do with some of their most beloved efforts. It leaves ‘Song 2’ as perhaps one of the most widely adored music industry jokes ever created.
Despite being one of the biggest bands in England, it wasn’t until this album that Blur started to gain some popularity across the pond in the US. Ironically, the track aimed to make fun of grunge became the biggest single that the band ever had before Albarn left Blur to start Gorillaz. This track might have been a joke used to poke fun at the state of grunge, but it’s impressive what artists can do when they have such an excellent punchline.
