The Great Escape? Is it really that bad...?

haha x-post, sorry.

I remember liking "Globe Alone" and the slashing guitar intro to "Stereotypes," but it remains the Blur album I play the least (not that I really play any Blur all that much anymore).

Like "It could be you" for example.

when i was younger, i thought it was quite witty, but i've decided that the lyrics are not particularly sharp. i think it falls into the category that the pinefox talks about on the infamous sleeper vs the strokes thread - (another one for any newcomers to ilx to dig out) - lyrics written by people who are *straining* to be camp, witty, observant, and think that they are succeeding because they write character songs about people with funny, posh british names etc - aping the style of a good lyricists like morrissey and j.cocker, without really bringing anything new to the party.

musically it's very rich and fun and varied and colourful and basically parklife version 2.0.

my favourite track? "he thought of cars", which i wrote about on stylus once: http://www.stylusmagazine.com/feature.php?ID=977

Good / Great: Stereotypes, Mr Robinson's Quango, He Thought Of Cars, It Could Be You.

Happy never to hear again: Country House, Ernold Same, Charmless Man (though I did like this at time), Globe Alone (ditto).

Dan Abnormal and Entertain Me have grown on me very slowly. It took me about five years to realise Dan Abnormal was an anagram.

the theme or idea or what have you is good mind, u know a concept album about how terrible,dreary,doomed everyday lower middle class 2.4/'nother-day-at-the-office life is but the *tunes*, crivens.

the lazy-ass lack of scan in the second verse of 'charmless man' makes it sound like a first take where mr a's making it up as he goes.

globe alone is a bad/dreadful 'bank holiday'.

the look on his face when he pullls that fake smile in the middle of 'the unversal's video made me want to belt him.

the would be kinks-y ooh look at us lifting the lid off of normal lives and saying summat clever ("she wears a low cut tshirt runs a little b n b/ she's most a-com-o-datin-when-she's-in-her-lingerie/ wife swapping is the fewtcha...") on 'stereotypes' eurg...

no. terrible. easily their worst, and god it goes on and on forever.

it's true to say that as a 21 year old after i heard this lp, having seen the parklife tour 3 times, i came home and tore my 7 foot high poster of them down off the wall and threw it in the bin out of fury.

'fade away' is ace though.

So do I!

This is like saying you'd rather wear a dress than have your testicles torn off by wild dogs.

"Country House" is fairly inoffensive -- it is/was obvious (both in hindsight and at the time) that they really wanted to have a #1 single from their new album, so it was all "OK, let's churn out a Britpop-by-numbers song" and that was that.

Like others have said, the more indefensible tracks are the ones where they cribbed the formula straight from "Parklife", e.g. "Bank Holiday" -> "Globe Alone", "Tracy Jacks" -> "Mr Robinson's Quango", "Girls and Boys" -> "Entertain Me", etc. -- ALL the photocopies are of lesser quality than the original, in many cases significantly so. Compiling an album the way one would cast a reality show = bad idea.

"Stereotypes", "Yuko and Hiro", and "Best Days" are all fantastic. "The Universal" might be my favourite Blur single (and the exception to the "photocopy" rule re: "To The End").

Now I enjoy latter-day Pearl Jam far more than Blur.

It's not Blur's best album but it has it's place. I actually really like Country House and the Universal. Not so hot on Stereotypes and Charmless Man ("He went na na na na naa na naaaaa" is probably the orst chorus in the world). I'd agree with what Damon said about it being a "depressed" rather than "depressing" album and in some ways it preceded Radiohead's OK Computer in its display of pre-millenium tension.

As I remember, it was actually 'Stereotypes' that was all set to be the lead single off the album, but 'Country House' went down even better at their Mile End Stadium show...and the rest is history etc

I can empathise here. When some really skanky girl came into school wearing a "DAMON" necklace and proclaiming that the Great Escape was like brilliant I sold all my albums and singles. I slowly reacquired them some years later when the hysteria died back down and they released On Your Own.

Can I just say, though: TEN FRICKIN' YEARS AGO? Jeez. I wrote a rabidly enthusiastic review at the time; mind you, I also wrote with passion and commitment about Shed 7, so what the fuck did I know?

genuine is sometimes overrated, sometimes underrated. in the ironic mid-nineties, it was underrated.

I concur on this.

And yeh, Parklife really is the best one really.

Ha! I thought maybe it was a b-side I didn't have.

I actually witnessed Albarn recording the intro to that song. he was standing in front of JA Spirits in Goldhawk Road next door to the Townhouse Studios hammering the door and yelling. This was about 7:15 on a Tuesday morning. I passed him by and said for shame alkie Albarn etc. but he explained it was only sound effects for the album. I still think that Peter Wyngarde would have narrated it better than "Red" Ken, mind you ("Neville Thumbcatch" etc.).

1. Girls And Boys - Entertain Me
2. Tracy Jacks - Mr Robinson's Quango
3. End Of A Century - He Thought of Cars
4. Parklife -
5. Bank Holiday - Globe Alone
6. Debt Collector - Ernold Same
7. Far Out - Fade Away
8. To The End - The Universal
9. London Loves - Top Man
10. Trouble In The Message Centre - It Could Be You
11. Clover Over Dover - Best Days
12. Magic America - Country House
13. Jubilee - Dan Abnormal
14. This Is A Low - Yuko And Hiro

Fair enough?

I always remember thinking that song was dumb from the opening line "Oh Mr Robinson... And his quango..." etc... It pissed me off because this line was basically the title of the song and I found it so devoid of imagination that as a 15 year old I could have written better lyrics. Also the line about herpes. And "ooooh ah'm a naughtay boyyy/Owwww ah'm a naughtay naughtay boooy" is SO annoying.

xpost blummin TIMING!

What are the lyrics to the backing vocals during the last verse of Clover Over Dover?

Coffee and Tv is great, but 'world of rubbish' is a bit harsh. Most of the songs on there are great, they just go on twice as long as they ought to.

boy, i must hear that track again.

I can't remember the exact details, but IIRC they were a load of regional semi official organistations, many of which were shut down by thatcher in the eraly '80's as a kind of populist move, b/c qango had become synonymous w/profigat govt spending at that point.

Yes. Three times, like St. Peter.

This is also true.

http://www.nme.com/news/blur--2/59677

This may well be the best Blur album ever.

nice to hear about that! man, I love this album so much, though I can understand why people find it too obnoxious, over-the-top etc. Damon Albarn at his most sarcastic, I guess.

'The Great Escape' is a good album. I don't think Blur ever made a great one - the closest that they came was 'Parklife' IMHO. Most of their albums suffer from being at least quarter of an hour/three or four songs too long. Tracks which, if they were cut, would have made the albums just that little bit stronger. I've never had a problem with the 'The Great Escape' though. When it's 'on' (which it is most of the time), it's fabulous. When it's 'off', it's the pits.

"Best Days" is an obscenely fantastic song, I will say that much. There is some rather slight stuff on the album as well, though.

Country House seems to define a moment; in the middle of all this ironic Benny Hill 90s lads comedy, and that great scribble of a guitar solo, it all stops while the singer tells us how depressed he really is. Then its back to the page 3 girls and the coke...

Pretty much every track has something going on musically, a great riff, killer hook, good idea in the arrangement, to recommend it, and almost every song is catchy as hell. But there are some awful, awful, hateful lyrics and vocals.

^^^^ yep

Has anyone ever hated humanity as much as Damon did on this album?

Damn, twenty years old.

xpost, yes, Damon Albarn now.

Pretty much every track has something going on musically, a great riff, killer hook, good idea in the arrangement, to recommend it, and almost every song is catchy as hell. But there are some awful, awful, hateful lyrics and vocals.

― Sick Mouthy (Scik Mouthy), Sunday, 18 March 2012 22:37 (3 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

100x yes. It would be such a great record if it hadn't been for the lyrics.

In a weird sequence of events, we decided to watch The Krays movie the other night, which promptly lodged the lyrics to 'Charmless Man' in my head. The next day, we sang it as we walked up the hill to a pub quiz where, during the music round they played 'Charmless Man' in reverse. To add to the coincidence, just as I was writing this post, I went to Google something completely unrelated and the first result was about the Kray Twins, but not what I was looking for.

Did anyone see B-Roads *finally* leaked yesterday? Maybe it was a private obsession for us Blur forum vets but it's rather like Carnival of Light has come out.

People were very weird about this. Mods demanding it must not be discussed. Show-offs who had somehow seen it informed the rest that it wasn't much cop and no one else needs to see it, yet describing every scene in great detail

B-Roads? What's that?

Late 1995 tour film / documentary, mentioned in the music press as something that was in the works. The band decided they didn't want it to come out and was quietly shelved. There wasn't too much fanfare/hype about it to begin with, but it slowly became something of a holy grail. The version that leaked could be just a rough cut, not sure

Wow. Thanks for this. I had Starshaped on video back in the day. It's odd seeing Matt Lucas in the tour party.

https://vimeo.com/774782708

on YouTube too

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYX7s_5MnTY

Links seem to keep getting yanked all the time. At least it's out there now

Oh wow you couldn’t even *mention* it on the old Blur forum without the mods getting their knickers in a twist. It’s meant to be really boring.

It’s a fun piece of fluff. I like the scene with Alex James splayed out on the floor of their green room and Damon’s deadpan encounter with a local news reporter. It veers into some Song Remains the Same territory, but it doesn’t feel like a real glimpse into their minds a la True Stories or Return to Waterloo

I really quite love it, it's a real curate's egg. The Best Days bit is genuinely quite poignant.

Pretty good tbh. Refreshing actually, after all the hyper-curated retrospective docs of recent years, to see a contemporaneous effort like this, warts and all.

I found the endless aestheticised poverty kind of gross, but the lack of easy Camden/London-stuff is quite appealing. It’s a lovely document of “what things looked like”.

Graham is the good looking one it turns out (when he’s not wearing his glasses)

Wow yeah I was expecting it to be pretty lairy but this is really quite sweet, especially considering what a collective headfuck they must have been experiencing at the time. The interviews with the public remind me a bit of Pulp’s mini documentary about the making of the This Is Hardcore video, that was also shot on film, possibly by the same people. The Best Days bandstand bit is great yeah, I love that song, and Damon’s bit about the rings at the hotel was a bit of an unexpected choker. Baffling this was blocked/banned for so long.

This film sounds interesting. I know nothing about it but hope to watch some time.

https://superdeluxeedition.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/cover2.jpg

Guess What This Is!

I was reminded of this album by the new Wolf Alice. An over-produced disappointing follow-up to a beloved classic which still has a couple of good songs.

At least this time I didn’t tear my poster down from
the wall in a huff.

i could see gen z / alpha - aged people getting into Oasis but I'd be genuinely interested in what they made of an album like The Greeat Escape. The whole thing feels like it's anchored to such a specific point in time; like, the whole thing may as well have been made on children's toys with lyrics about penny farthings or something

Gen Z don't have the baggage and can enjoy it more at face value. But also I don't really think it's that tied to its time - songs about depressed lonely people in dead-end lives will always have their place. Plus I'm still waiting on a band to form whose sound is just a rip-off of "He Thought of Cars". Personally I love TGE and I think it has the edge over Parklife.

As for the new artwork? Why, I always wanted a fusion of Chicago 19, Orange Milk, "Jumping Someone Else's Train" and funfair ride artwork. I've noticed the B-sides disc isn't strictly in sequence - but starting with arguably their worst material before quickly progressing to some of their best would have been better. Looks like they just wanted "The Man Who Left Himself" and "Eine Kleine Lift Musik" to give that disc as sinister a call-and-response ending as "Yuko & Hiro" and the "Ernold Same" reprise on the original album.

I could see myself getting into Great Escape before any Oasis if I were coming of age today. Give me pop hooks and irreverence over the anthemic guitar pomposity of Oasis.

I mean, I would personally always pick Blur over Oasis. But how to explain to someone that this wasn't just popular at the time it was ON THE NEWS popular. And it's all this knees-up third person storytelling music about quangos and the national lottery. It feels (to pun) entirely out of time

Oasis didn't have pop hooks and irreverence?

Think there were three main takes on TGE:

1. Clever sardonic art-pop satire on 90s UK culture (contemporary reviews)
2. A load of try-too-hard pretentiously wacky novelty music and a wrong turn in general (Oasis fans at the time, subsequently became the most popular reading)
3. A man having an existential crisis trying to create a cast of characters to get to grips with his feeling that everything is spiralling out of control, with results varying from ok to brilliant (imo the correct reading, but if you were Damon the LP would feel like an open wound, his dislike of it since really fits with this)

it's a really depressing album

i mean, the bends came out the same year and it gives that a run for its money

it's just a much lesser attempt at parklife 2 and i don't really love parklife

that artwork is abysmal, the album is fine

i kind of like it. looks like it was made out of clippings from Select and the Face

Linder Sterling's first two hours on Photoshop with a gun to her head and 'Midnite Vultures, but even shitter', as a brief. Wonder what was so wrong with the original.

the original is better. maybe their second best album cover after parklife for me. it's totally at-odds with the music, as though this is the life that all these sorry characters in these songs are dreaming of

if i were to buy this though, i'd do it for the extra disc. they were absolutely killing it with their b-sides at this point; and there are so many sad, strange, sometimes slightly sickly or disturbing songs here. The (I think) Charmless Man B-sides are especially haunted. And even whackier songs like Ludwig and the excellent One Born Every Minute have an unsettling peculiarity to them.

Dire Straits' 'Alchemy' in hell

ha I knew it reminded me of something.

I think entertain me is underrated - it sounds like a lost elastica single

The trumpet on Fade Away, Specials pastiche or otherwise, is gorgeous - great song

I don’t mind this album but charmless man is so bad, it kind of taints the rest for me. And universal has always seemed like a poor man’s To the end

I did think Charmless Man was a very poor choice of single. Stereotypes too, not that it's a bad song but it doesn't really have a chorus.

Yeeeeeeaaaaahhhhh it wasn't a strong song even as an album opener. Charmless Man was hard to love, and wasn't offering anything new after Country House and The Universal

My choice of single would have been No Monsters In Me.

I was just thinking about what I would have subbed those with. Topman and Fade Away I guess. Monsters In Me is good. I could see One Every Minute being fun then ruining their careers

Globe Alone would have been a statement single, dunno if a good statement but something anyway.

Topman could have been really good had they sped it up a bit and lost some duff production touches (the 'oh' backing vocals, that eastern synth, etc)

Let's not forget Stereotypes was earmarked to be the first single until they played Country House at Mile End

It totally has a very identifiable conventional chorus that they repeat several times btw

Honestly think they should have stuck out He Thought Of Cars instead of Charmless Man, considering it would have been at the peak of their backlash - a seriously great song, one of their best ever, not as commercial but no less than Beetlebum

There's something very theatrical about this album. I'd be surprised if no one (even Damon) ever thought of turning it into a musical stage play of some sort. Something like Topman and those "Oh"s PaulTMA mentions sound like they're straight out if Bugsy Malone.
I swear there's even something a bit "cardboard cutout" about the general production on this album, as though the scenery it conjures up is actually stage decor in a pantomime

Topman made a brief return in 2003, funnily enough
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8z6gYHf17wk

Oh yeah, that whistling synth was completely the sort of thing that was getting up noses at the time, I'm sure

I don't really have a problem with the choice of singles - they're all well-known, they did the job, they're major singalongs live.

One Born Every Minute is probably my least fav Blur song, even more than something like Alex's Song. And yet the '96 singles have maybe their best run of B-sides, alongside the MLIR ones. They hadn't been recorded in '95 and obv the pathway to the s/t begins there etc etc

Definitely, Ludwig being the wacky outlier. It almost feels like the other Stereotypes and Charmless Man b sides belong on a deluxe of the s/t album instead

I won this CD off the radio or in a record store, can't remember.

There are a couple of really bad ones too of course but "Yuko and Hiro" is probably my favourite Blur song.
― everything, Monday, 12 September 2005 15:37 (nineteen years ago)

I agree with this!

It totally has a very identifiable conventional chorus that they repeat several times btw

Haha, I love One Born Every Minute. Along with songs like Til The Cows Come Home and Theme From An Imaginary Film, it's 100% leaning into whatever aspect Blur were being mocked for at that stage of their career. "Oh well see how we've grown"... the chorus gets stuck in my head a lot.

"Stereotypes" doesn't work for me. An unmemorable mid-tempo plodder, like a less exciting 'London Loves' that opens with this grating guitar and synth fanfare. The lyrics don't cohere properly - in what way are these imaginary, hastily-painted wife-swappers "stereotypes"? And it kicks off an album where the running theme seems to be "Damon is existentially depressed, but it could be worse because at least he's not like these poor sods".

In fact I have a long and storied tradition of skipping the first song on most Blur albums (except MLIR, Think Tank and the S/T)

"Doesn't really have a chorus" is a bit of an unusual description of a song with a repeated identifiable chorus but I'm sorry if I've touched a nerve there

The "really" is doing some lifting there. Of course it technically has a "chorus", but I agree with CaAL that compared to pretty much all their imperial-era singles, it's more of a drone than a singalong.

So it doesn't have a good chorus then I suppose

I remember a rave review for this album on Melody Maker at the time comparing it to ABC's "The Lexicon of Love"

I was 17 when this came out - I don't recall anyone putting it on the stereo at a friend's house, although "Different Class" and (er) "Garbage" were in regular rotation. IIRC, at this point, it felt (as a teenager like Blur were a bit tired and for the normies only.

I don't think I've listened to this since I posted the first reply. Can't imagine me bothering now either tbh.

xp there was definitely a week at school around this time when Blur suddenly tipped from being a popular band for us indie kids into something "For the normies". Girls in my class who'd only ever really cared about boybands were wearing necklaces with "DAMON" written on them in a heart, etc. And the band themselves seemed to embrace their new mainstream attention. Wasn't there a quote where Damon literally said he was god's gift to women? And Alex telling a joke: "What is 30ft long and goes AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!? - the front row at a Blur gig"

I used to think Ludwig was like a 2x speed knees-up remake of the Seymour track Shimmer. Having now just played Shimmer at 2x speed 'cus why not .. well there are some similarities at least.

TGE is the only 90s album not to open with its lead single (although as stated by PaulTMA above Stereotypes was the initial lead choice).

"What is 30ft long and goes AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!? "

The version I heard was much ruder than this! Perhaps that laddishness should be left in the 90s, but it was a now-unacceptable dig on the extremely young pre-puberty age of their new fanbase.

It's weird because up until last year, this was the last time that I stayed up all night to buy a new album the moment it was released. (I might even have gone to a signing IIRC.) At the time, I remember thinking 'ooh this is new and grownup and mature' but I think I was maybe being a big naive and projecting 'interesting' into stuff that just wasn't actually working.

I will still rep for He Thought of Cars, Fade Away and Entertain Me! (That last one has one of the best basslines of Alex's career.) But these days I have come to accept that for me, Blur were a time and place. And I'm not a Blur fan any more.

Yeah, agree re: "time and a place". I think of myself as someone who quite liked Blur -- I saw them live twice! -- but looking at their album tracklists (especially from TGE onwards), mostly I'm thinking "hmm, this is quite a lot of annoying songs".

When I'm in a Blur mood, I just play "Clover Over Dover" and "End of the Century" and that's that. I played 13 to death at university, and even with that, looking back there's nothing there I want to hear again.

Of course there is nothing wrong with growing out of a band, nor is it the band's "fault"

"Stereotypes" doesn't work for me. An unmemorable mid-tempo plodder, like a less exciting 'London Loves' that opens with this grating guitar and synth fanfare. The lyrics don't cohere properly - in what way are these imaginary, hastily-painted wife-swappers "stereotypes"? And it kicks off an album where the running theme seems to be "Damon is existentially depressed, but it could be worse because at least he's not like these poor sods".

― Now read it backwards. (dog latin), Wednesday, 3 September 2025 09:09 (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

My take on this was Damon noting to himself that he really should stop writing these "vignettes" about people he doesn't know really and resorting to stereotypes to write songs.

And, that's exactly what he did do - not write Charmless Man, Ernold Same, or things like this again, past this album and singles....

The Great Escape's depressing-cheery-More-Specials-muzak sound (especially Yuko & Hiro) later resurfaced on Gorillaz' To Binge which, like a good chunk of TGE, is among the best thing's he's ever done imo

Xp yeah I agree. Although what a funny way to start your album in which pretty much every song is "Look at the little people with their sad little lives"

Its the one great escape on the album. All downhill from there.

I quite enjoy 'Stereotypes.' If you were outside the UK and stumbled upon this album, like I did, the bitter lyrics didn't really register, I guess?