1997 Blur: Beetlebum

By 1997 with the 'battle' with 'rivals' Oasis lost , Blur began moving away from the knees up romp al la 'Country House' (in an "if you can't beat 'em, don't compete" kind of way) to an altogether different place that took inspiration from the post grunge, lo-fi music scene filtering in from across the Atlantic. Damon Albarn had of late been trumpeting the virtues of Pavement to anyone who'd listen and promised in advance that the new Blur album would be more than one step removed from the dying on its arse Britpop movement. He wasn't kidding either; simply called 'Blur', the album was as fresh a start, line drawn in the sand affair as its definitive title suggested and lead off single 'Beetlebum' presented a more gritty aura than previous.

In hindsight it seems obvious, even without subsequent confirmation from Albarn, that 'Beetlebum' was a song about drug use; "And when she lets me slip away, she turns me on all my violence is gone, nothing is wrong, I just slip away and I am gone". Yet 'Beetlebum' escaped the furore that surrounded an 'Ebeneezer Goode' by virtue of its tone and ambiguity; there's nothing celebratory about Albarn's descriptors, they're as matter of fact as Lou Reed's "Heroin, it's my wife and it's my life", but while Reed's song builds slow before descending into a hell of squally noise, 'Beetlebum' opens with a guitar led dirge in a box that gives way to the widescreen chorus that breathes freely with some very Beatle-esque harmonies to give voice to the pleasures of a heroin high.

Ah but hindsight too has shown that though this seemed a brave step leftfield at the time, its edginess flatters to deceive; I'm always happy to trust my own ears, and here they're telling me that they've heard all this before. There are plenty who have strip mined the cod-violent gun/cum imagery of 'Beetlebum' (contemporaries Suede for one, though Albarn would not welcome the comparison) to better effect than its designer rough and Albarn's own 'one of the lads' twang can manage. Which means that there's nothing new about 'Beetlebum' beyond the novelty of its own existence, and though it breaks new ground for Blur, the paths it follows have been well trodden by others before it. And trodden to much better effect to be honest.