The story of how Blur created an impossible drumbeat
In the early 1990s, guitar music exploded. Grunge music leaked through the headphones of kids on the West Coast of the United States, while pedal-driven shoegaze bubbled beneath the surface on the other side of the Atlantic. But it was Britpop that came out on top in the United Kingdom, finding favour with widespread audiences for capturing Cool Britannia through catchy choruses. At the centre of it all was a London-born band called Blur.
Spawning out of the capital in the late 1980s, Blur didn’t necessarily set out to reinvent guitar music. Instead, Britpop bands initially looked to the past for inspiration, to the bright-sounding strums of the 1960s, to the enduring influence of The Kinks and The Beatles. Of course, they brought that influence into the present day, pulling in elements of the Madchester scene and other more off-kilter inspirations, but classic songwriting remained key.
Those influences gradually changed as the band grew, and by the time they reached their fifth album, Britpop was dying, and Blur were yearning for something a little more experimental. They had established themselves as one of the more interesting bands of the Britpop generation, sonically, something they would reaffirm on their self-titled record, Blur, in 1997.
Somehow, the band’s more experimental direction would rival the success of their mammoth early hits like ‘Parklife’ and ‘Girls and Boys’. Blur spawned the gorgeous ‘Beetlebum’ and the hazy ‘You’re So Great’, but it found its biggest hit in ‘Song 2’, a track the band had initially penned as a parody. But, quickly, a “woo-hoo” and a placeholder name became one of the band’s signature hits.
‘Song 2’ also featured a drum section that is impossible for one musician to play. While recording the song, Dave Rowntree took up his usual position behind the drum kit, but guitarist Graham Coxon joined him on an additional set. Together, they forged the thrashing beat that persists throughout the song.
“We didn’t think about it at all,” bassist Alex James told Q Magazine of the making of ‘Song 2’, “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.” Without even realising it, Blur had created an all-time indie classic and one of their biggest hits.
Rather than seeing ‘Song 2’ as part of their new, alt-rocker direction, James described it as a “throwback” for the band. “We’d always done brainless rocking out,” he divulged, “though maybe it’s not what we’re known for.” They might not have been known for it before ‘Song 2’, but the track certainly cemented them as some of the best rockers around.
Well over two decades later, ‘Song 2’ is still one of the most well-loved and well-known songs in Blur’s catalogue. With relentless drums, a driving bassline, and those repeated, iconic declarations of “woo-hoo,” the band had turned an inside joke and a drumming duo into something else entirely.
So if you’ve ever sat behind the drumkit, struggling desperately to play along to ‘Song 2’, take comfort in the knowledge that even Dave Rowntree couldn’t play the song alone. The driving beat requires at least two drumkits, two drummers, and a punch of that laddy Britpop humour.
