2/2/2024 0 Comments Tender blurThat takes the pressure off." – Alex James, bassist ĭuring Coxon's hiatus from the group, Blur continued to perform the song, with Albarn asking audiences to sing Coxon's lines, "Oh my baby/Oh my baby/Oh why?/Oh my". And that makes a really big difference when you've got an obvious global number one. That's the anodyne quality of some music, assuaging your feelings of guilt and horror. "I remember walking into the studio feeling like shit, for reasons I won't go into, and hearing the vocal to 'Tender' and feeling better again. The writers share the singing, with backing vocals by the London Community Gospel Choir. Frischmann told British newspaper The Observer that she cried the first time she heard the song, then felt embarrassed and angered before she calmed down. The song's lyric, by Damon Albarn and Graham Coxon, describes the break-up between Albarn and Justine Frischmann, then the lead singer of Britpop band Elastica. It also reached the top 20 in Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Norway, and Spain.īackground, lyric and live performances Written by the four band members about Blur frontman Damon Albarn's breakup with musician turned painter Justine Frischmann, the song became Blur's eleventh top-10 hit on the UK Singles Chart, debuting and peaking at number two on 28 February 1999. Graham Coxon steals the show, though, his brilliantly knotty blues riff and accompanying “oh my baby” refrain providing the song’s beating heart." Tender" is a song by English rock band Blur from their sixth studio album, 13 (1999). Tender has become one of their best-loved songs, with Albarn sounding wounded and open-hearted, extolling the listener (and, by extension, himself) to “get through it”, reminding himself that “love’s the greatest thing”. For many, Blur were now the “Wooh-hoo!” guys, and this – a seven-plus-minute gospel-inspired epic that struggles to find hope in heartbreak – was how they returned? Of course, they pulled it off. It marks an audacious moment in the group’s career, especially considering that their 1997 self-titled album had become their biggest-selling to date, mostly thanks to the US success of Song 2. That all changed with Tender, the lead single from 1999’s 13. While each of Blur’s albums to this point had been studded with moments of melancholy beauty, Damon Albarn’s songs were never explicitly personal, the singer preferring to cloak any autobiographical elements in character studies. Without Coxon’s contribution, the song would be a beautiful and bruised piano ballad – one of Albarn’s finest, even – but the guitarist adds to the emotional heft by summoning great storms of distortion and an eloquent descending solo as a parting shot, underling just how much the best Blur songs relied on his original talents. The sense of loss is mirrored by the music. It’s one of a series of songs that explore Albarn’s relationship with Coxon (see also: My Terracotta Heart, Sweet Song), with the singer attempting to look back fondly on their time together, announcing, “This is a ballad for the good times,” before offering Coxon an olive branch (“But you know you’re not alone/You can be with me”). The result was a record on which the gifted guitarist barely featured, contributing only to the closing track, Battery In Your Leg. Though he’d taken part in early recording sessions for Think Tank, Graham Coxon’s relations with the band soured to the extent that he left long before the album was completed. The public were not quite ready for brass-propelled punk blasts (the single stalled at No.32 on the UK chart), but it remains a defining moment in the band’s early history.ġ4: Battery In Your Leg (from ‘Think Tank’, 2003) While it sounds like a celebration of a bright new scene (indeed, it’s considered to be one of the songs that kicked off Britpop), listen closer and you’ll hear Albarn brattily comparing himself and other musicians to clones going through the motions – a theme he’d return to regularly throughout Blur’s early albums. These 20 best Blur songs reveal how that happened… Listen to the best of Blur here, and check out our 20 best Blur songs, below.įollowing the baggy stylings of their debut album, Leisure (1991), the fizzy noise-pop of Popscene marked the point where Blur really began to find themselves. But they refused to be pigeonholed, moving on to more experimental material and creating one of the greatest catalogues in modern British music. From their indie beginnings, Blur – Damon Albarn (vocals), Graham Coxon (guitars), Alex James (bass) and Dave Rowntree (drums) – became household names as one of the leading groups in the Britpop movement.
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