Leisure / Pablo Honey: The Shaky Debut Album
Every great band had to start somewhere, and Blur and Radiohead both came into the spotlight with very underwhelming, though not necessarily bad, debuts. The issue here is that both bands sounded like all the other Stone Roses/Smiths wannabe bands that flooded the England scene in the early 90’s with no indication of the quality music that would come only a few years later.
The key takeaway here is that each album had one massive hit that, at least for a while, seemed to doom each band to One-Hit-Wonder status: “She’s So High” and “Creep”. Both songs still sound great, but it’s easy to see that both bands intentionally spent the rest of their careers trying to escape those songs.
A lot of these songs are non-essential, but if you want some good deep tracks check out Blur’s “Bang” and Radiohead’s “Anyone Can Play Guitar”.
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Modern Life Is Rubbish / The Bends: The Promising Follow Up Album
It was only each band’s second album, but already the conversation had shifted from “Blur/Radiohead are the next X” to “X is the next Blur/Radiohead”.
Modern Life Is Rubbish and The Bends are both the more assured and confident albums that were made possible when each band took their influences (The Kinks and Stone Roses for Blur, The Smith and U2 for Radiohead) and, instead of continuing to imitate, decided to fuse them with a newfound identity and attitude. For Blur, it was the rejection of American grunge (ironically the same ideology that they would embrace a couple years later) and their total embracement of their British identity (thus essentially creating Britpop), and for Radiohead it would be their fusion of melancholy with stadium-sized guitars (we would not have Coldplay without The Bends).
Each album had successful singles, but it’s the strong deep tracks of both albums that made fans and critics pay closer attention to these young bands. Each now had a “sound” and began influencing their peers, and both albums were critically praised and sold well.
To this day there are a few fans who will stand by these albums as their personal favorites, but both are worth checking out regardless.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BciOfJsqh7M
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Parklife / Ok Computer: The Masterpiece Album
These are the time-capsule albums, the two albums that will go down as the definitive statements for each band and of their era of popular music. These might not be your favorite albums of each band (they’re not for me), but there’s no denying that these are the most important albums that each band will ever make.
Parklife and Ok Computer are time-capsule albums not only because they sound like their best records but also because they’re both about a very specific time in history and, specifically, the malaise that’s associated with each time. For Blur, they understood that God and Country was not all that it was cracked up to be even in good times, and Radiohead was aware (or fearful) of the false promise of technological progress. This is most obviously heard from the sad humor of Phil Daniel’s talk bits on the title track and “Filter Happier”, but you can hear it more subtlety in Blur’s character studies via “Tracy Jacks” (work sucks) and “Magic America” (America is a myth) and in Radiohead’s pleas for help in “Subterranean Homesick Alien” and “No Surprises” when the feeling of isolation grows the more connected you are; for both bands, the end of the century really was nothing special.
Yes, both albums are sad affairs when you look through the cracks, but you can get away with ignoring the messages and still have a compelling listening experience, since both these albums are full of incredible songs that still sound great after all these years.
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The Great Escape / Kid A & Amnesiac: The “Fuck You, Critics” Album
Blur and Radiohead could have very easily made Parklife 2.0 or Ok Computer 2.0 and everyone would have been happy, but each band decided to take the road less traveled and make the album that they wanted to make, and we’re all better for it.
The Great Escape isn’t as drastic of a departure from its predecessor as Kid A was (it’s still very poppy and still very British), but both albums are more complex and heavier to digest; if you couldn’t pick up the satire and social commentary cues from Parklife or Ok Computer, then you were blindsided with how blunt these albums sounded.
But in the end, these are the best sounding albums for each band and the ones that you can come back to each time and find something new to discover, and for that I choose these albums as my personal favorites. I also love how each band was willing to sacrifice all their newly acquired fame and fortune for the sake of artistic integrity and to deny critics the satisfaction of writing their own history before it was over. But of course, critics and fans both loved these records and they were both successful on the charts.
Note: I put Amnesiac in this category since it came from the same sessions as Kid A, and the two albums are so similar that I consider it more of a really great Kid A B-side collection rather than a stand alone album. I’m also bias since “The Universal” is my favorite Blur song, which I like it more than any Radiohead song.
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Blur / Hail to the Thief: The Awkward Comedown Album
What do you do when you face the task of following up what you probably know will be your best album? Simple, you don’t. You switch things up, you find new inspiration, and you start shouting “Woo-Hoo” behind loud grungy guitars.
Yep, this is the Blur album with “Song 2” and the album where they ditched Britpop for American indie, and Hail to the Thief was the Radiohead album that was overly political and brought back real guitars after two guitar-less albums. Both albums are great, but this was the first case for both band showing their mortality. Both albums are hit and miss and can only be heard in particular moods when you’re willing to sit through almost a hour of awkward ideas and moody melodies that aren’t as catchy as you want them to be.
Both albums were still successful (and Blur finally broke into America), but many people had begun to ask the question, “how long can these guys keep it up?” In the end though, you have to applaud both bands for wanting to try new things. Also, you try following up two nearly perfect albums and I guarantee it won’t sound as good as these songs.
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13 / In Rainbows: The “We Got Our Mojo Back” Album
The idea of a band “rebirth” is usually highly exaggerated, except when you talk about 13 and In Rainbows. For both bands, this was the moment when they came walking out of the woods and found a new sense of clarity and focus that had been missing for a long time, but the inspiration for change came from two very different sources.
In Blur’s case, the band was tired of their fame and both Coxon and Albarn were at odds with each other and with themselves, but they had learned how to channel their frustration into music. 13 is fuzzy and hard to listen to at times, but for many fans this is the high point of Blur, the moment when they learned to be vulnerable and share their hurt and frustration with those who were willing to share it, and the result is what many people consider to be Blur’s best album. I still stand by The Great Escape as my favorite, but “Tender”, “Coffee & TV”, and “No Distance Left To Run” all belong in my top ten Blur songs.
For Radiohead, they learned how to groove. Seriously, In Rainbows could have been the first Radiohead album you could dance to, or at least silently nod to. But that’s not all; the grunge songs were more grungy (“Bodysnatchers”), the ballads were more ballad-y (“Nude”), and the grooves more groovy (“Reckoner”). And is Thom Yorke singing to me how he wants to be my lover on the highlight “House Of Cards”??? Don’t worry, this is still the same sad Radiohead, but the transition from melancholy rockstars to indie clubbers is special. The whole pay-for-what-you-think-it’s-worth was a nice touch, but the quality of the music saved it from being a gimmick.
Overall, both albums are marked for their more personal lyrics and “human” touch that many thought they were incapable of. These albums also introduced each band to a whole new audience (In Rainbows was my first Radiohead album and I was hooked right away). 13 isn’t as accessible, but it sounds miles away from Parklife, so the people who were turned off by Blur’s Britishness tend to like this album.
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Think Tank / The King of Limbs: The Midlife Crisis Album
For the few bands that manage to reach so many years into their career as Blur and Radiohead did, you’ll eventually reach a crossroads. Do you go out on top? Do you keep pushing yourself and your audience? Do you make the same successful album over and over? For both bands, the answer was to keep pushing, but the results weren’t as satisfying as their younger experiments, or at least not at first.
Both albums are all over the place and trying out all sort of crazy things with mixed results. On Think Tank there are Moroccan drums, Moroccan rhythmic patterns, and a song called “Moroccan Peoples Revolutionary Bowls Club” (this album was recorded in Morocco by the way). The King of Limbs isn’t as chaotic but it’s equally as confusing – did Radiohead become an electric jam band?
Both albums are a mixed bag and leave most listeners wanting more, though I will say that both sound better with age. Along with each band’s debut, these two are the only other non-essential albums. But hey, at least both albums had at least one fantastic song.
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The Magic Whip / TBD: The “At This Point, It’s Just Cool That They’re Still Making Music” Album
For both bands, the fan base is set and no more new albums will magically convert you into a fan. Blur has a new album coming out, and Radiohead have confirmed that they’re in the studio, but what will likely happen is that the only people who will go out and buy these records are the ones who already love these bands, and the haters will continue to hate.
And that’s ok.
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