Parklife is the third studio album by the English rock band Blur, released in April
1994 on Food Records. After disappointing sales for their previous album Modern Life
Is Rubbish, Parklife returned Blur to prominence in the UK, helped by its four hit singles:
"Girls & Boys", "End of a Century", "Parklife" and "To the End". Certified four times platinum
in the United Kingdom, in the year following its release the album came to define the emerging
Britpop scene, along with the album Definitely Maybe by rivals Oasis. Britpop in turn would
form the backbone of the broader Cool Britannia movement. Parklife therefore attained a cultural
significance above and beyond its considerable sales and critical acclaim, cementing its
status as a landmark in British rock music.
Recording After the completion of recording sessions
for Blur's previous album, Modern Life Is Rubbish, Damon Albarn, the band's vocalist,
began to write prolifically. Blur demoed Albarn's new songs in groups of twos and threes. Due
to their precarious financial position at the time, Blur quickly went back into the
studio with producer Stephen Street to record their third album. Blur met at the Maison
Rouge recording studio in August 1993 to record their next album. The recording was a relatively
fast process, apart from the song "This Is a Low".
While the members of Blur were pleased with the final result, Food Records owner David
Balfe was not pleased with the record, telling the band's management "This is a mistake".
Soon afterwards, Balfe sold Food to EMI. Music
Blur frontman Damon Albarn told NME in 1994, "For me, Parklife is like a loosely linked
concept album involving all these different stories. It's the travels of the mystical
lager-eater, seeing what's going on in the world and commenting on it." Albarn cited
the Martin Amis novel London Fields as a major influence on the album. Oasis guitarist Noel
Gallagher was once quoted saying that Parklife was, "Like Southern England personified".
The songs themselves span many genres, such as the synthpop-influenced hit single "Girls
& Boys", the instrumental waltz interlude of "The Debt Collector", the punk rock-influenced
"Bank Holiday", the spacey, Syd Barrett-esque "Far Out", and the fairly new wave-influenced
"Trouble in the Message Centre". Journalist John Harris commented that while many of the
album's songs "reflected Albarn's claims to a bittersweet take on the UK's human patchwork",
he stated that several songs, including "To the End" and "Badhead" "lay in a much more
personal space". Title and cover
The album was originally going to be entitled London and the album cover shot was going
to be of a fruit-and-vegetable cart. Albarn stated tongue-in-cheek, "That was the last
time that Dave Balfe was, sort of, privy to any decision or creative process with us,
and that was his final contribution: to call it London". The cover refers to the British
pastime of greyhound racing. Most of the pictures in the CD booklet are of the band in the greyhound
racing venue Walthamstow Stadium, although the actual cover was not shot there. The album
cover for Parklife was among the ten chosen by the Royal Mail for a set of "Classic Album
Cover" postage stamps issued in January 2010. Release
Reception Parklife remains one of the most acclaimed
albums of the 1990s, released in April 1994, debuted at number one on the UK Album Charts.
The album stayed on the chart for 90 weeks. However, the album only charted at number
6 on the Billboard Top Heatseekers album chart in the United States. Johnny Dee, reviewing
Parklife for NME, called it "a great pop record", adding "On paper it sounds like hell, in practice
it's joyous." Rolling Stone gave the album four out of five stars. Reviewer Paul Evans
wrote, "With one of this year's best albums, [Blur] realize their cheeky ambition: to reassert
all the style and wit, boy bonding and stardom aspiration that originally made British rock
so dazzling." AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine commented: "By tying the past and the present
together, Blur articulated the mid-'90s zeitgeist and produced an epoch-defining record." Conversely,
Robert Christgau stated that the only good song on the album was "Girls & Boys".
Accolades Parklife has received accolades since its
official release and is largely seen not only as one of the best albums of 1994 and its
decade, but of all time. The album was nominated to the 1995 Mercury Prize, but it lost to
M People's Elegant Slumming. Blur also won four awards at the 1995 Brit Awards, including
Best British Album for Parklife. The album was listed as one of the 1001 Albums You Must
Hear Before You Die. In 2006, British Hit Singles & Albums and
NME organised a poll of which, 40,000 people worldwide voted for the 100 best albums ever
and Parklife was placed at number 34 on the list. The album has been hailed as a "Britpop
classic". Parklife influenced a number of British guitar bands, including The Boo Radleys,
Supergrass, Gene, Echobelly and Menswear. In July 2014, Guitar World ranked Parklife
at number seven in the "Superunknown: 50 Iconic Albums That Defined 1994" list.
Track listing All lyrics written by Damon Albarn except
"Far Out" by Alex James, all music composed by Blur.
Personnel Blur
Damon Albarn – lead and backing vocals, keyboards, hammond organ, moog synthesizer,
machine strings, harpsichord on "Clover Over Dover", melodica, vibraphone, recorder, programming
Graham Coxon – guitars, backing vocals, clarinet, saxophone, percussion
Alex James – bass guitar, vocals on "Far Out", crowd noise
Dave Rowntree – drums, percussion, programming, crowd noise
Additional musicians Stephen Street – vintage keys, sound effects,
some programming Laetitia Sadier – vocals on "To the End"
Phil Daniels – narration on "Parklife" Stephen Hague – accordion
String quartet Chris Tombling
Audrey Riley Leo Payne MBE
Chris Pitsillides Duke strings;
Louisa Fuller – violin Rick Koster – violin
Mark Pharoah – violin John Metcalfe – string arrangement, viola
Ivan McCready – cello Kick horns;
Richard Edwards – trombone Roddy Lorimer – flugelhorn, trombone
Tim Sanders – tenor sax, soprano sax Simon Clarke – baritone sax, alto sax, flute
Charts and certifications References
Harris, John. Britpop! Cool Britannia and the Spectacular Demise of English Rock, 2004.
ISBN 0-306-81367-X Notes