Word: rock
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CHRIS: But what comes off as glorious effect on Blur’s albums comes through the traipsing over generations of important British rock preceding them: you must remember that when a band so ostentatiously channels John and Paul’s heart and soul, or Jagger’s swagger, they are implicitly placing themselves among these influences, and as a result most bands don’t dare to reach back in such earnest...
Blur recognizes that the stylistic flow of ’90s rock is one that celebrates and explores the ironies of musical history—not surprising for a decade lit off by the perverse cheerleaders of “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” The guitar-rock that Oasis so convincingly emulates frequently clung to a set of themes about pastoral English life, reflected in such songs as the Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby” or “Penny Lane,” and the Kink’s magnum opus...
...Coffee and TV”? When Blur wants to shoot for that sound, as on this stand-out, they succeed with flying colors. But, for the most part, this isn’t what they’re after—rather than accept themselves as heirs of British rock, they explore just what it means to be a British rocker, and even just to be British, and these level of inquiry and musical introspectiveness I just find completely absent in the pleasant but not ultimately intellectually engaging music of their Manchester peers...
...She’s Electric,” “Married with Children,” and a handful of others fit the bill, but overwhelmingly the semi-cryptic lyrics of the Oasis canon point in the opposite direction: “Tonight, I’m a rock and roll star,” Liam sneers in the chorus of “Rock and Roll Star” (there’s a title Blur would never be as confidently arrogant to use), and there can be no confusing that level of grandeur with provincialism...
Concept and intellectualism can be great, but they don’t directly correlate with quality, and for what it’s worth, they’re a pretty recent addition to what rock and roll was originally all about...