There's No Other Poll: Let's rank the Blur albums

At this exact moment, I'm really torn between Parklife, Blur, and 13. Can't vote yet.

Blur and maybe 13 will turn out to be their lasting work.

Parklife for me

s/t or... think tank

Really want throw a sympathy vote to either Leisure or The Great Escape, since I think both are about fifty-billion times better than everyone says they are. But really, this is Modern Life all the way.

MLIR was close for me, and I also really like The Great Escape

13 > MLIR > TGE > Blur > Leisure > Parklife > TT > TMW

my thing with 13 is that i don't really like "tender" so it's hard to... listen to an album that starts with it

yeah I always start with Bugman

I rode 13 hard when I was coming out and hopelessly in love

more controversially I also like to skip No Distance Left To Run because he's already made his big breakup meltdown point much better on 1992 and Trimm Trabb really is the record's climax

'11' doesn't quite have the same ring though

TMW was dire, the best example of why bands shouldn't reform from the last 10 years at least.

yep

apart from the opening track and 'go out' maybe

13 > MLIR > TGE > Blur > Leisure > Parklife > TT > TMW

I'd already totally forgotten that The Magic Whip existed and was baffled as to what 'TMW' referred to for a good few seconds there

gonna vote for think tank bc i love that record most than i guess almost everyone

My order would probably be..

Modern Life Is Rubbish - The only Blur album where I don't want to skip any of the songs.

Parklife - I never need to hear the title track again. I could probably lose The Debt Collector and Magic America too. It does also include many of their finest moments and Trouble In The Message Centre which has been my favourite Blur song since I got into them over 20 years ago.

13 - The singles are some of the weakest songs but Trailer Park is the only real dud. Caramel is one of the best songs they've ever done.

Think Tank - This album is ridiculously uneven. Sweet Song, Ambulance, Out Of Time and Battery In Your Leg are all so perfect. Brothers & Sisters, Crazy Beat and Jets are some of the worst songs they've made.

The Great Escape - The ballads are what save this album for me. Best Days, The Universal, He Thought Of Cars and Yuko & Hiro are all beautiful. Entertain Me is great too with a brilliant bass line from Alex. I could definitely live without Top Man, Charmless Man and a couple of songs on the second half.

Blur - This sounded amazing at the time but has aged really badly. Beetlebum, Death Of A Party and Strange News From Another Star are the main keepers.

The Magic Whip - Four decent songs and a whole lot of filler. The songs would be better if Damon had bothered to come up with some interesting vocal melodies.

Leisure - Sing is the only song I go back to. I don't even really enjoy the singles.

This seriously boils down to either Modern Life Is Rubbish or Blur for me, and since the former falls off a little in the second half, I'll go with the latter.

All of the rest are a mix of tracks that are either great or terrible, with the ratio of great-to-terrible tracks varying from LP to LP. Aside from Parklife, which has aged terribly.

Modern Life Is Rubbish is one of my favourite albums of all time so that gets my vote.

MLIR > Parklife > Blur > TT > 13 > TMW > TGE > Leisure

I feel bad ranking Great Escape so low because The Universal is amazing and there are a couple of other really good songs but the rest of it ranges from OK to terrible.

gonna vote for think tank bc i love that record most than i guess almost everyone

I would like it and the s/t about evenly were it not for "Crazy Beat" which really is just shit

The Great Escape - The ballads are what save this album for me. Best Days, The Universal, He Thought Of Cars and Yuko & Hiro are all beautiful.

otm

13 easily!

Is vote for the singles collection if I could.

Those in between tracks made the album feel like the best kind of kaleidoscopic mess when I was a teenager

I would like it and the s/t about evenly were it not for "Crazy Beat" which really is just shit

― a serious and fascinating fartist (Simon H.), Tuesday, March 21, 2017 3:07 PM (thirty-five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

without "crazy beat" it's a great introverted funk record with gorgeous ballads so yes

Ok, I've decided to vote for the self-titled album. Here's my ranking:

1. Blur - So many great tracks, from "Beetlebum" to "Strange News" to "On Your Own" to "MOR." Of all the Blur albums, this and "13" took the longest to grow on me. The hooks and melodies eventually sank in. From start to finish, their most complete and range-y.

2. 13 - Of all their albums, "13" feels the most of a single piece. I especially love how the back half segues and blends together in a melancholy fog. A couple songs are definitely skippable (ahem, "Swamp Song"), but some of the band's all-time highs are here: "No Distance Left to Run," "Coffee & TV," "Caramel."

3. Parklife - Catchy as hell, moves along quickly and joyfully. And my first exposure to Blur, as a 7th grader, when "Girls & Boys" hit modern rock radio.

4. Think Tank - It's despised in some quarters, but "Good Song," "On the Way to the Club," and "Battery in Your Leg" rival their best, earlier work. And "Ambulance" has some of Albarn's most powerful lyrics: "I was born out of love / It's the only way to come into this world / I know I'm not all there / But I'm getting, getting, getting there."

5. The Great Escape - Would rank higher if it wasn't so bloated and looooong. It loses its steam somewhere around "Ernold Same" but picks up again with the dynamite "Entertain Me." "Country House" won the Battle of Britpop? I would've gone with "The Universal."

6. Modern Life is Rubbish - It's all memorable and catchy, but for some reason it never sticks. Too thin and same-y. I only return to "Turn it Up" with some regularity. But I know many consider it their absolute best.

[big drop]

7. Leisure - The two big hits, "There's No Other Way" and "She's So High," are great. Would also give props to "I Know" and "Sing" (depending on which country you bought the album in). The rest is forgettable.

8. The Magic Whip - Someone said it best upthread... lots of filler surrounding a couple decent songs. And bands shouldn't take a decade off and come back. "Lonesome Street" is the highlight.

I'd have almost always gone with Parklife but I think the s/t is the only one that's aged anywhere close to gracefully

I guess I'm in the minority, but I always found the sudden shift from "britpop Blur" to "we wanna be Pavement now" Blur very disturbing, and as a result really haven't enjoyed anything post-TGE

13 is the only album that's not really uneven and is their best by a long way. Half of Think Tank is some of their very best but the other half is pretty forgettable. The Magic Whip is dreadful, reunion albums can be pretty risky but I was never expecting it to be as bad as it was.

13
Blur
Think Tank
Parklife
Modern Life is Rubbish
The Great Escape
Leisure
The Magic Whip

13 is definitely uneven, probably one of their most uneven, I'd say. Assuming we're talking about the same 13 here, the one with 'Swamp Song' and 'Trailer Park' on it.

my ranking

self-titled
13 tied with parklife
everything else

"Trailer park" is excellent, I love it when Blur go trip-hop.

I don't like "Clint Eastwood" though, even though it's got a similar groove as Trailer Park. TP has such a warm understated arrangement/production

I... thought Magic Whip was great. So much beautiful detail in the arrangements. What's the correct number of years between albums?

That might be a good topic for a new thread.. what's the longest span between two albums from a band that were actually decent on either end of the hiatus.

...rather, both ends of the hiatus

mbv, next

Yeah, the MBV follow up wasn't a letdown

The Magic Whip was especially disappointing because the two Parklife-esque tracks they did in 2012 were decent enough and there wasn't really a drop in quality from Blur to Gorillaz (though Everyday Robots was pretty awful and is closest to The Magic Whip)

I'll take an EP of the best four or five songs on The Magic Whip over the entirety of Everyday Robots.

Blur is funny for me, i own all their albums expect the one from last year and about 25 singles. loved them at the time but never have the desire to play them now. even when we were running the Blur poll i thought it would be a good time to listen all over again. i never did get around to it and ended up not submitting a ballot.

voting Modern Life.

Parklife > Blur > Modern Life is Rubbish > The Great Escape > 13 > Think Tank > The Magic Whip

I've never bothered to listen to Leisure.

Think Tank is one of those albums would be perfect if only it weren't for a few utter crap songs like Crazy Beat

all the same remains my fave, gets my vote.and Out of Time is fantastic

This thread has made me pull out my Blur albums. Never realized how much "Mr. Robinson's Quango" sounds like Syd Barrett's "Octopus"

never understood the love for parklife, i was quite disappointed when it came out. "modern life is rubbish" gets my vote, it hit me directly in the guts, there is an englishness to it i love. "13" is almost as good but it impressed me slightly less, maybe it was too close to prog-rock for my liking.

I like "The Magic Whip" would place it in the middle probably.

Having said that, I don't want any more.

never understood the love for parklife

― it's the distortion, stupid! (alex in mainhattan), Wednesday, March 22, 2017 1:31 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It might just be a case of first exposure to the band leaving the biggest impression, but Parklife seems to highlight their strengths. It has some of their best drone-y ballads ("This Is A Low", "To The End"), zany interstitials ("Lot 105", "Bank Holiday"), Kink-y slice of life songs ("Tracy Jacks", "End Of A Century"). As an album, it's fun and it gorgeous. Whenever someone says another band/song sounds like Blur, they're not talking about "13" or "Think Tank", they're talking about Parklife. Plus, "Girls & Boys" -- I could vote for it on that song alone.

Yeah, its 'one for all the family' innit?

Really surprised Great Escape is so low

Guess I have to give Magic Whip another shot

I still see 13 as a patchy mess, just it's a patchy mess that I like more now than I did in the late '90s. I wrote '1992' off at the time as being a lesser version of 'Sing', but now I find its use of noise compelling.

Damon should really stay the fuck away from using falsetto.

I don't know how much company I'll have, but expanded 13 also includes Music Is My Radar, which is actually one of my favorite non-album singles. Kind of Can, I guess. I was really excited when it came out, and then somewhat let down by Think Tank. The b-sides were pretty great as well.

I hated 'Music Is My Radar' when it first came out, but now I prefer it to about half of 13.

I always hated how the British Leisure didn't have "I Know," and the US one didn't have "Sing."

I bought 13 when I was 13. It was probably the turning point in my music listening habits. Prior to that purchase, my favorite album was Saturday Teenage Kick by Junkie XL. 13 will always be my favorite Blur album, warts and all.

xp the US version didn't have Sing??
that's like the main reason for owning it

'I Know' is fucking garbage.

13 belongs in the bracket of post-britpop millennial ambition with idk OK Computer, Six and other things I probably like too much

― an uptempo Pop/Hip Hop mentality (imago), Thursday, 30 March 2017 20:41 (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm interested in expanding on this because I think there are probably some more really good examples of late-'90s psychedelic/proggy indie (the Gorky's thread revive got me thinking, as did listening to bands I'd previously ignored this past week like The Soundtrack of Our Lives and pre-Mobile Disco Simian). I think Clinic might fit in somewhere? Also I'm just fascinated by those between-scene eras that are often talked about as creative wastelands but never really are.

This poll is almost right.

think tank deserves better

Watching a dance floor clear in summer '03 when the duck call in "Crazy Beat" started has sullied my memory.

Think Tank is pretty great if you drop Crazy Beat, definitely top 3 for me

^^

and with modern technology, you can drop crazy beat!

Although I choose not to, because I enjoy the track and find it odd how it's always been singled out for criticism as if it's one of the worst things the band have done, which of course it isn't.

They did worse earlier.

Yeah, there's a couple of things on Leisure that are worse, and some real stinkers among the b-sides.

Although, Blur were a far better b-sides band that they're generally given credit for.

*than

Hmm, I'd go MLIR > Parklife > Blur > TGE > Leisure > TT > 13. I struggle to recall anything from the last two, and 13 in particular has so much flab, and really only three good songs.

13 is the least dated

Blur and Modern Life is Rubbish are the two I find myself returning to the most. I like 13 more now than I did almost 20 years ago.

I liked it better then, I think - it was my #17 album of the year. I imagine it would struggle to make the top 40 now, although the thought of having to listen to tons of 1999 music to find out is depressing. Maybe next year, after the inevitable Pitchfork article about how it was a pivotal year in popular music, uncoincidentally written by someone born in 1982.

Almost every album sparked the same contradictory emotions, you admired them, then you wanted to strangle them. It has to be Modern Life for Blue Jeans, don't you think? Out of Time is also damn near perfect.

Some bands I like to name check,
And one of them is BLUR,
Classic songs with a long history
Southern boys just like you and me.
Be-El-You-Are
Flashback to 1991,
Leisure was their first LP
Later on came Modern Life
Mallard art, and titles to match:
Chemical World, Starshaped,
For Tomorrow, Blue Jeans,
Kazoo kazoo you are mine,
Oily Water was my least favourite song,
Oily Water was my least favourite song.

Taken from the Blur tracks poll I did in 2011 - not votes for albums, but aggregating the votes for tracks to the albums they came from:

1. Parklife (2,786)
2. Modern Life Is Rubbish (1,808)
3. Non-album tracks (1,535)
4. Blur (1,491)
5. Great Escape (1,341)
6. Thinktank (1,221)
7. Thirteen (1,174)
8. Leisure (738)

If you swap #1 and #7 the results of the poll may be just about right. As an album Modern Life Is Rubbish is the most cohesive though.

Of course I refer to the aggregated tracks results.

Parklife was always a stronger end-to-end listen compared to Modern Life is Rubbish, which I always felt outstayed its welcome by a few tracks (it seems to fall off a little after 'Oily Water' for me) ... Nowadays, I'm far more likely to listen to Modern Life is Rubbish over Parklife, which feels like it's aged quite badly.

I mean, I don't want to say Parklife sounds dated, but it is strongly evocative of a very specific time which is at odds with now.

I always found Parklife a big drop-off after Modern Life Is Rubbish. Girls & Boys is such a crap song, I found it ridiculous the first time I heard it just when it had come out and the whole album was such a mixed bag and not really holding together.

This is crazy talk afaic - "Girls & Boys" is one of their standout tracks, and Parklife is pretty much their most cohesive album. I do agree with Turrican that it is too much of its time for it to resonate with current tastes, and I doubt I'll have the desire to listen to it again some time soon. (I do in fact think it also sounds "dated", but I've never understood why that's such a pejorative. Revolver sounds dated, Thriller and Bandwagonesque sound dated, "In da Club" sounds dated. So what?)

I'm listening to Think Tank for the first time in years. It could definitely do with editing and there are tracks here that do absolutely nothing ('Jets'?) but also it hold up a lot better than I expected

I'd say Out Of Time is up there with the best of their stuff. Actually, I probably did say that (in that poll more than a decade ago).

Is this the current Blur thread? They have just had a disastrous set at Coachella.

the crowd for blur at coachella was so embarassing damon im so sorry i wasn't there pic.twitter.com/k60LxJj8a7

— nicole (@cupidschok3hold) April 14, 2024

with all due respect (I quite enjoyed the set and Blur in general), it was sort of weird that they were on the main stage

i dont really understand who coachella is supposed to be for?

they have gen z fans aplenty throughout the world but idk if many of them were likely to be at coachella

a happier vid from a few days back

Audience member nails “Parklife” with @blurofficial on 4/10/24 at Fox Theatre in Pomona. #blur pic.twitter.com/rNmXXf7Dmy

— Beaker (@Beakerlives) April 11, 2024

They were the best set that I saw yesterday, don't care how it coma across live. We're talking about it on the Coachella thread while it was happening.

i had never listened to the magic whip before today, just not sure what i could reasonably expect from it and no one seemed enthused about it so why check it out? well, it's. great

Easily my least favourite but thanks for prompting me to give it another go

You know what ivy, you might be right. I don't think I gave this more than a few cursory listens over the years. Maybe it just wasn't what I wanted from Blur in 2015. Maybe I just didn't need a Blur album in 2015. Or maybe I was sceptical about a new record back then and found it lacking ("Where are the songs?" etc.

But listening now, I wouldn't hesitate to call it an extension of the vibes they experimented with on the 1997 s/t album with this scrappy post-punk sound and plenty of squiggly lo-fi electronic noises.

And yeah, the songwriting could be stronger. When you have a band who are so recognisable through their tropes I can forgive myself for getting an uncanny feeling on hearing this as their first record in over a decade. The trappings of Graham's guitar style, Damon's vocal and lyrical stylings, it was overfamiliar by then.

Distance can really help with appreciating a record. When this came out, the most concerning thing for me was "Is it going to live up to their previous stuff?" There was a rush to dive in and come out with an opinion. That's not necessarily the best way to get into a record, but zeitgeists are zeitgeists.

Being able to listen to this on its own terms is a pleasure. There's a lot more to this record than I first assumed. It's a lot better realised and less clunky than I first gave it credit for.

I thought it was "fine..." at the time, some decent stand out tracks, and so forth.

Better than those "holding" singles tracks that came out a year or so before.

I didn't play it much, but I did think I don't need any more Blur.

FF to the "Darren" album, and oh i now have two versions. One that's supposed to dance around the room, and one that you can sit in the middle of.

It's ok, but that's all now, no more... Plz.

officially beginning to think "thought i was a spaceman" is the best blur song

definitely could be dropped at the end of a dj set :)

i checked out the ballad of darren as well and it felt like a 37-minute nap to me, but i'll try to spend more time with it. idk magic whip somehow feels like a genuine follow-up to think tank, whereas ballad of darren felt like an attempt to make a less embarrassing great escape (yawn)

Spaceman is really good, although it does share a lot of DNA with songs like Battle and Strange News From Another Star

Darren really flags in the second half, but I really REALLY like Barbaric and would probably stick it in a top 20, if not top 10 Blur songs

Spaceman was my favourite on Magic Whip for years, might still be, and I don't think it's comparable to Battle or Strange News really, but it's probably the closest TMW gets to a Damon solo thing - the megaphone voice, iPad 80s rhythm machine, On Melancholy Hill-ish synth high notes, it's a grabbag of 2010s Damon trademarks put to imo their natural dazzling peak before he started overdoing it for me.

I'm probably too close to The Magic Whip as an experience - I'd been on the Blur forums (and, at that point the centre of things, Veikko's fan forums) for a few years and it's the most I've ever felt wrapped up in the hype around an album (and I really don't get how this was a decade ago already). Just makes me happy to listen to. Was still there to see The Ballad of Darren unfold too but that was like five minutes ago.