When Blur, one of the great British pop bands of the past 25 years, announced that they were releasing a new album 12 years after their last release (The Magic Whip due April 27th via Parlophone Records), you probably responded in one of the following ways:
-WOO-HOO! LONG LIVE BLUR! FUCK OASIS!
-BOO-HOO! LONG LIVE OASIS! FUCK BLUR!
-Wait, aren’t they that one band that did the “Woo-Hoo” song?
-Who is Blur?
Yep, it’s unfortunate to say that, at least in America, Blur still lives under the shadow of one hit song, and, even if you’re more informed about Blur, you probably describe them in relation to how you also feel about Oasis and the absurd and short-lived “Battle of Britpop” of the mid-90’s.
In short, this “battle” was a chart competition between London art-school kids Blur and Manchester tough lads Oasis (and which side were YOU on?). I don’t want to spend too much time on this, but think of it as The Beatles vs. The Rolling Stones in that Blur tried to push pop music to its limits with diverse yet oddly consistent results (Beatles) while Oasis tried to write the same chorus over and over again with mixed results (Stones).
But there was another big British band that was active during this so-called Britpop battle that we seem to forget existed in the same universe – Radiohead.
That’s right, while the media was having a field day deciding between “Country House” and “Wonderwall”, Radiohead was quietly releasing The Bends and Ok Computer and pushing the boundaries for what popular music could do. Ok, the media loved Radiohead too, but we don’t seem to weigh in Radiohead’s contributions compared to Blur and Oasis (they weren’t Britpop, but all three are British!). However, after some analysis of both Blur and Radiohead’s history, the two bands are more alike than different (though I can’t say the same for Radiohead and Oasis).
Truth be told, I originally was going to write about the history of Blur vs. Oasis (like any good lazy journalist would), but after going through both Blur and Radiohead’s discography I realized that the two bands have an almost identical history in terms of what their albums mean to their legacies and what sort of impact they each had on popular music.
So to make things more interesting, let’s have a little fun comparing the two bands album by album.
Now “vs.” is misleading since there never seemed to be any sort of beef between these bands (you never heard Thom Yorke tell Damon Albarn to Catch Aids and Die) and I love and respect both bands. Below is simply a friendly comparison between Blur and Radiohead, so think of this as a “If you like Radiohead then you’ll appreciate Blur” kind of piece.
Here’s a reference for you Blur newbies: we have Damon Albarn (yes, that guy from Gorillaz) on vocals and keyboard, Graham Coxon on guitar, Alex James on bass, and Dave Rowntree on drums. Each band member had songwriting chops, but for the sake of simplicity think of Albarn/Coxon as the McCartney/Lennon of this band in that their clashing egos helped drive the band to make sure diverse (and great) music.
*
Continue to the next page for the faceoff.
Some of the coverage you find on Cultured Vultures contains affiliate links, which provide us with small commissions based on purchases made from visiting our site. We cover gaming news, movie reviews, wrestling and much more.
