Blur (Blur Album) - Music

Music

Rowntree stated that the band decided to give Coxon a much freer hand on Blur. Street also observed a change of Albarn's writing style, as he "was much more prepared to write in the first person, rather than about interesting characters. I think grown a bit and was prepared to start writing about his own experiences rather than transposing them on to a character like Tracy Jacks or Dan Abnormal." Coxon agreed, and felt "Damon's songs were revealing more to me than to him" and said that when he heard some of his home demos he realised "he'd obviously gone off his head a bit more". The album features the first song in which Coxon not only wrote the lyrics, but also sang lead vocal—"You're So Great".

Album opener "Beetlebum" has been described as a "Beatles tribute" by several publications; Stephen Thomas Erlewine of Allmusic wrote that the song " through the White Album in the space of five minutes." Albarn admitted that "Beetlebum" was about heroin and the drug experiences he had with his then-girlfriend, Justine Frischmann of Elastica. Albarn has stated that the song describes a complicated emotion, sort of "sleepy" and sort of "sexy". The song's title is a reference to the phrase "Chasing the beetle" which refers to inhaling the smoke from heated heroin, morphine, or opium that has been placed on a piece of tin-foil. "Song 2" is notable for its hook which features Albarn yelling "woo-hoo!" The song intended as a parody of American grunge music. It was embraced by the same radio stations whose airplay choices the song was parodying in the first place. The song's intro has been called Coxon's "finest moment". Erlewine described "Country Sad Ballad Man" as a bizarrely affecting, strangled lo-fi psychedelia. "M.O.R." is described by James Hunter of Rolling Stone as a roaring homage to Mott the Hoople. The song borrows the chord progression from David Bowie's "Boys Keep Swinging" and "Fantastic Voyage", the latter of which was co-written by Brian Eno. The chorus also lifts its melody and the call and response vocals from "Boys Keep Swinging". "On Your Own" is notable for its usage of a Roland TR-606 Drumatix, a 1980's drum machine. Erlewine described the song as "an incredible slice of singalong pop spiked with winding, fluid guitar and synth eruptions." "Theme From Retro" was described as "obligatory space-rock trip-hop" by The Austin Chronicle. "You're So Great", the first Blur song to be written by Coxon, was describe by Tom Sinclair of Entertainment Weekly as recalling the "whacked-out plangency of Midwestern lo-fi heroes Guided By Voices."

Lindsay Zoladz's review of the album (as part of Blur 21) for Pitchfork claimed that "Death of a Party" is the album's highlight and that it "now sounds like the first proto-Gorillaz Blur song." Sinclair stated that "Chinese Bombs" "careens along like looking for a Lower East Side mosh-pit den," while Zoladz felt that "I'm Just a Killer for Your Love" was "exquisitely bleary-eyed." In "Look Inside America", Albarn recalls the band waking up from a previous night's show, swigging Pepsi to find the energy to do a local TV show. Hunter called the song a "classic '90s road ballad." The song contains the refrain "Look inside America, she's all right; she's all right," which was said by Erlewine to "cleverly subvert the traditional Blur song, complete with strings." The albums closing track, "Essex Dogs" was described by Erlewine as a "six-minute slab of free verse and rattling guitar noise." This is followed by "Interlude", a hidden track.

In a 1997 video interview, Rowntree claimed, "It was a much more aggressive record in many ways as well as a more emotional record. I think the music we're making now is the music that we've always wanted to make but got distracted from in a way."