Parklife Explained

Parklife
Type:studio
Artist:Blur
Cover:BlurParklife.jpg
Released:25 April 1994
Recorded:August 1993 – February 1994
Studio:
Genre:
Length:52:40
Label:Food
Prev Title:Modern Life Is Rubbish
Prev Year:1993
Next Title:The Great Escape
Next Year:1995

Parklife is the third studio album by the English rock band Blur, released on 25 April 1994 on Food Records. After moderate sales for their previous album Modern Life Is Rubbish (1993), Parklife returned Blur to prominence in the UK, helped by its four hit singles: "Girls & Boys", "End of a Century", "Parklife" and "To the End".

Certified four times platinum in the United Kingdom by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI),[1] the album came to define the emerging Britpop scene in the year following its release, along with the album Definitely Maybe by future rivals Oasis. Britpop in turn would form the backbone of the broader Cool Britannia movement. Parklife therefore has attained a cultural significance above and beyond its considerable sales and critical acclaim, cementing its status as a landmark in British rock music.[2]

In 2010, Parklife was one of ten album covers from British artists commemorated on a UK postage stamp issued by the Royal Mail.[3] [4] In 2015, Spin included the album in their list of "The 300 Best Albums of 1985–2014".[5] Rolling Stone magazine ranked the album number 438 in its 2020 list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time".

Recording

In 1990, a year before Blur's debut album, Damon Albarn, the band's vocalist, had told a group of music journalists, "When our third album comes out, our place as the quintessential English band of the '90s will be assured. That is a simple statement of fact. I intend to write it in 1994."[6]

After the completion of recording sessions for Blur's previous album, Modern Life Is Rubbish, Albarn began to write prolifically. Blur demoed Albarn's new songs in groups of twos and threes.[7] Due to their precarious financial position at the time, Blur quickly went back into the studio with producer Stephen Street to record their third album.[8] Blur met at the Maison Rouge recording studio in August 1993 to record their next album. The recording was a relatively fast process, apart from the song "This Is a Low".

While the members of Blur were pleased with the final result, Food Records owner David Balfe was not, telling the band's management "This is a mistake". Soon afterwards, Balfe sold Food to EMI.[9]

Music

Blur frontman Damon Albarn told NME in 1994, "For me, Parklife is like a loosely linked concept album involving all these different stories. It's the travels of the mystical lager-eater, seeing what's going on in the world and commenting on it." Albarn cited the Martin Amis novel London Fields as a major influence on the album.[10] Oasis guitarist Noel Gallagher was once quoted saying that Parklife was, "Like Southern England personified".[11] The songs themselves span many genres, such as the synthpop-influenced hit single "Girls & Boys", the instrumental waltz interlude of "The Debt Collector", the punk rock-influenced "Bank Holiday", the spacey, Syd Barrett-esque "Far Out",[12] and the fairly new wave-influenced "Trouble in the Message Centre". Journalist John Harris commented that while many of the album's songs "reflected Albarn's claims to a bittersweet take on the UK's human patchwork", several songs, including "To the End" (featuring Lætitia Sadier of Stereolab) and "Badhead" "lay in a much more personal space".[13]

Title and cover

The album was originally going to be entitled London and the album cover shot was going to be of a fruit-and-vegetable cart. Albarn stated tongue-in-cheek, "That was the last time that Dave Balfe was, sort of, privy to any decision or creative process with us, and that was his final contribution: to call it London".[14] The cover depicts the British pastime of greyhound racing.[15] Most of the pictures in the CD booklet are of the band in the greyhound racing venue Walthamstow Stadium, although the actual cover was not shot there.[16] The album cover for Parklife was among the ten chosen by the Royal Mail for a set of "Classic Album Cover" postage stamps issued in January 2010.[17] [18]

Reception

Parklife was met with critical acclaim. Johnny Dee, reviewing Parklife for NME, called it "a great pop record", adding "On paper it sounds like hell, in practice it's joyous." Paul Evans of Rolling Stone stated that with "one of this year's best albums", the band "realize their cheeky ambition: to reassert all the style and wit, boy bonding and stardom aspiration that originally made British rock so dazzling." Conversely, Robert Christgau of The Village Voice indicated that the only good song on the album was "Girls & Boys".[19]

Parklife remains one of the most acclaimed albums of the 1990s. In a retrospective review, AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine commented: "By tying the past and the present together, Blur articulated the mid-'90s zeitgeist and produced an epoch-defining record."

Commercial performance

Upon release, Parklife debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart and stayed on the chart for 90 weeks.[20] [21] It reached number six on the Billboard Top Heatseekers album chart in the United States.[22] In the UK it sold 27,000 copies in its first week and would see a resurgence in sales the week before Christmas of 1994, with weekly sales of 40,000.[23] Parklife is Blur's bestselling studio album in the UK, with just over a million copies sold.[23]

Accolades

Parklife has received accolades since its official release and is largely seen as one of the best albums of the 1990s. The album was nominated to the 1994 Mercury Prize, but it lost to M People's Elegant Slumming.[24] Blur also won four awards at the 1995 Brit Awards, including Best British Album for Parklife.[25] The album was listed as one of the 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.[26]

In 2000 it was voted number 95 in Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums.[27] He stated "Parklife was a stunning album of high-quality, undeniably English pop."

In 2003, Pitchfork placed the album at number 54 on their Top 100 Albums of the 1990s list.[28] In 2006, British Hit Singles & Albums and NME organised a poll of which, 40,000 people worldwide voted for the 100 best albums ever and Parklife was placed at number 34 on the list.[29] The album has been hailed as a "Britpop classic".[30]

In April 2014, American LGBT magazine Metro Weekly ranked the album at number 29 in its list of the "50 Best Alternative Albums of the 90s".[31] In July 2014, Guitar World placed Parklife in its "Superunknown: 50 Iconic Albums That Defined 1994" list.[32] The album was ranked at number 171 on Spins "The 300 Best Albums of the Past 30 Years (1985–2014)" list.[33] In 2017, Pitchfork listed the album at number two in its list "The 50 Best Britpop Albums".[34] In 2020, Rolling Stone ranked the album at number 438 in their list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time".[35]

Track listing

Bonus disc notes

Personnel

Blur

Additional musicians

String quartet

Duke strings

Kick horns

Charts and certifications

Weekly charts

Chart (1994)Peak
position
European Albums[37] 8
Finnish Albums (Suomen virallinen lista)[38] 32
Icelandic Albums[39] 4
Irish Albums[40] 3
Japanese Albums (Oricon)[41] 36

Certifications and sales

References

External links

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Damon Albarn on Blur's Parklife, 20 years on . . 26 April 2014 . 25 October 2016.
  2. News: McMillan . Graeme . Parklife Is the Cornerstone of Britpop, But It Shouldn't Be . 25 January 2021 . Time . 28 April 2014 . "[''Parklife''] . . . was also the album many people point to as Ground Zero for what soon became known as Britpop. . . . "Cool Britannia" was a phrase uttered without sarcasm. Blur, and the Parklife album in particular, were the heart of that.".
  3. News: Royal Mail unveil classic album cover stamps . 23 September 2022 . The Independent.
  4. News: Royal Mail puts classic albums on to stamps. 23 September 2022 . The Guardian.
  5. The 300 best albums of the past 30 years(1985-2014) . Spin. 11 May 2015 . 14 March 2021.
  6. England's Dreaming . . 7 . June 1994 . Cavanagh . David . David Cavanagh . 66.
  7. How did they do that? – Parklife . . 59 . May 1995 . Cavanagh . David . David Cavanagh . Maconie . Stuart . Stuart Maconie.
  8. Harris, p. 97
  9. Harris, p. 139
  10. Web site: Sweeney . Eamon . Damon Albarn interview: ‘I think my life has been a bit too colourful to be quite ready for an autobiography’ . 2022-03-08 . Business Post . en.
  11. We Can Be Eros Just For One Day . . 5 March 1994 . Moody . Paul.
  12. Web site: Review of Blur – Parklife . . 23 April 2007 . 4 December 2011 . Easlea . Daryl.
  13. Harris, p. 140
  14. Essential Albums of the 90s: Blur – Parklife BBC/6music. Aired on 10 November 2010.
  15. Web site: Blur – Parklife (album review) . Sputnikmusic . 16 January 2005 . 24 January 2012 . Med57.
  16. Dog track that inspired Blur's 'Parklife' album art to close . . 20 May 2008 . 24 December 2011.
  17. Web site: Classic Album Covers: Issue Date – 7 January 2010 . . 8 January 2010 . https://web.archive.org/web/20120219004400/http://www.royalmail.com/portal/stamps/content1?catId=32300674&mediaId=112400790 . 19 February 2012 . dead.
  18. News: Coldplay album gets stamp of approval from Royal Mail . . 8 January 2010 . 8 January 2010 . Michaels . Sean.
  19. News: Consumer Guide . . 6 June 1995 . 18 November 2015 . Christgau . Robert . Robert Christgau.
  20. Web site: Blur . . 17 June 2020.
  21. Harris, p. 142
  22. Web site: Parklife – Blur – Charts & Awards . . 4 December 2011.
  23. Web site: Official Charts Flashback 1994: Blur – Parklife . . 2 May 2014 . 14 November 2018 . Myers . Justin.
  24. News: Cries & Whispers . https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220525/https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/cries--whispers-1449544.html . 25 May 2022 . subscription . live . . 18 September 1994 . 10 June 2009 . Hughes . Jack.
  25. Web site: The BRITs 1995 . . 4 December 2011.
  26. Web site: 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die . rocklist.net . 4 December 2011.
  27. Book: Larkin, Colin . All Time Top 1000 Albums . All Time Top 1000 Albums . Colin Larkin . . 3rd . 2000 . 0-7535-0493-6 . 73.
  28. Web site: Top 100 Albums of the 1990s . . 17 November 2003 . 1 May 2015 . 5.
  29. Best album of all time revealed . . 1 June 2006 . 17 June 2020.
  30. Web site: Inside the Gorillaverse: A Look at Alt-Rock's Best Cartoon Band . . 2 March 2010 . 24 December 2011 . Dietz . Jason.
  31. 50 Best Alternative Albums of the '90s . . 4 April 2014 . 31 December 2016 . Gerard . Chris.
  32. Superunknown: 50 Iconic Albums That Defined 1994 . . 14 July 2014 . 14 July 2014 . https://web.archive.org/web/20140715053900/http://www.guitarworld.com/superunknown-50-iconic-albums-defined-1994 . 15 July 2014 . dead.
  33. The 300 Best Albums of the Past 30 Years (1985–2014) . . 11 May 2015 . 6 August 2015 . Unterberger . Andrew . 3.
  34. Web site: The 50 Best Britpop Albums . . 29 March 2017 . 30 May 2017 . 5.
  35. Web site: Rolling Stone. 22 September 2020. The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. 22 September 2020. en-US.
  36. Web site: Parklife – Blur – Credits . . 4 December 2011.
  37. Book: Inc, Nielsen Business Media. Billboard. blur.. 21 May 1994. Internet Archive.
  38. source:Pennanen, Timo: Sisältää hitin – levyt ja esittäjät Suomen musiikkilistoilla vuodesta 1972. Helsinki: Kustannusosakeyhtiö Otava, 2006. . page: 280
  39. Web site: Tonlist Top 40. DV. is. 8 June 2017.
  40. Web site: Billboard. Nielsen Business Media. Inc. 23 September 1995. Google Books.
  41. Web site: パーク・ライフ ブラー. Parklife Blur . Oricon. ja. 16 October 2012.
  42. Web site: Album Top 40 slágerlista (fizikai hanghordozók) – 2024. 17. hét . . 2 May 2024.