“We felt forced into this weird Britpop thing that we had nothing to do with.”
With their fifth album BLUR, Blur put a dent in Britpop and began to become more aggressive again. At least that’s the assessment of guitarist Graham Coxon. In an interview with “MOJO”, he remembers his efforts to move the band in a different direction and to find a way out of Britpop after GREAT ESCAPE.
In his opinion, Coxon was the main founder of the group’s stylistic change at the time and now explains in the interview how he tried to achieve this: “I decided to write a letter to Damon because I didn’t dare to talk about my needs. It went something like this: I’d like to start scaring people again, because in the beginning we were into unrest and we showed that with songs like “Oily Water” and “Resigned.” Let’s make some damn noise and have fun.”
He didn’t get much of a reaction to that at the time, but he noticed how Damon Albarn was letting him take more control of his feelings. “I think he understood that and was very interested in everyone being able to express themselves,” Coxon says today.
He further recalls: “We felt forced into this weird Britpop thing that we had nothing to do with, but I guess we were trying to get any Britpop smell out of our clothes and get away from our beloved Kinks .”
BLUR was created in an attempt to escape Britpop and this experimental approach to the album resulted in a mixture of songs that were sometimes more and sometimes less planned, says Coxon. “It’s an unfocused album, but every song has its own personality, which can be difficult to achieve,” explains the 54-year-old and also explains in an interview: “If anyone had tried to make a Blur album, it would be it this was because of its self-absorbed moments. I can’t remember how it was reviewed or if it was particularly well received, but it came from an authentic place and then it’s hard to tear it apart. Authenticity is an amazing force field!”