Modern Life Is Rubbish is the second studio album by the English alternative rock band Blur, released in May 1993. Although their debut album Leisure (1991) had been commercially successful, Blur faced a severe media backlash soon after its release, and fell out of public favour. After the group returned from an unsuccessful tour of the United States, poorly received live performances and the rising popularity of rival band Suede further diminished Blur's status in the UK.
Under threat of being dropped by Food Records, for their next album Blur underwent an image makeover championed by frontman Damon Albarn. The band incorporated influences from traditional British guitar-pop groups such as the Kinks and the Small Faces, and the resulting sound was melodic and lushly produced, featuring brass, woodwind and backing vocalists. Albarn's lyrics on Modern Life Is Rubbish use "poignant humour and Ray Davies characterisation to investigate the dreams, traditions and prejudices of suburban England", according to writer David Cavanagh.
Modern Life Is Rubbish was a moderate chart success in the UK; the album peaked at number 15, while the singles taken from the album charted in the Top 30. Applauded by the music press, the album's Anglocentric rhetoric rejuvenated the group's fortunes after their post-Leisure slump. Modern Life Is Rubbish is regarded as one of the defining releases of the Britpop scene, and its chart-topping follow-ups—Parklife and The Great Escape—saw Blur emerge as one of Britain's leading pop acts.
Background Blur's baggy-inspired debut album Leisure (1991) was a UK Top 10-charting record that, according to the NME, made the band the "acceptable pretty face of a whole clump of bands that have emerged since the whole Manchester thing started to run out of steam".Kelly, Danny. "Sacre Blur!". NME. 20 July 1991. However, as the baggy scene soon began to fade, Blur were—according to The Guardian—"[s]wiftly exposed as bogus trend-hoppers, [and] they duly caught the wrath of the Madchester backlash".Shelley, Jim. "Pop Art". The Guardian. 12 August 1995. Further, following their fall from public favour, the group found that they were £60,000 in debt, mainly due to mismanagement. Blur hired new manager Chris Morrison and, to recoup losses, were sent by their record label Food to the United States as part of the Rollercoaster tour.Harris, 2004, p. 66 To coincide with the start of the tour, Blur released the "Popscene" single; the new release showcased a significant change in musical direction, as Blur traded their shoegaze-derived sound for one influenced by 60s British guitar pop. However, the single failed to break into the UK top 30 which further diminished Blur's profile in the UK.Erlewine, Stephen Thomas. "'Popscene' song review". AllMusic. Retrieved on 27 November 2010.
The 44-date tour of the United States left Blur in "complete disarray", according to writer David Cavanagh. Dismayed by American audiences' infatuation with grunge and the lacklustre response to their music, the group frequently drank, and members often broke into fist-fights with one another. Homesick, the tour "instilled in the band a contempt for everything American", Cavanagh later wrote; frontman Damon Albarn, who "started to miss really simple things [about England]",Harris, 2004, pp. 73–75 listened to a tape of the English pop group the Kinks throughout the tour. He later stated the only pleasant memory he had of the tour was his time spent listening to the Kinks' 1967 single "Waterloo Sunset".Rogan, 2015, p. 571 Upon their return to England, the group discovered that the attention of the music press had shifted to Suede. The newcomers' success displeased Blur who, in Cavanagh's words, "were inclined to feel that every record Suede sold was an affront to human decency". After many poor live shows, which Blur members often performed while drunk—in particular one at a 1992 gig that featured a well-received performance by Suede on the same bill—Blur were in danger of being dropped by Food.Harris, 2004, p. 78
Recording Damon Albarn, in a 2000 Mojo interview, said that "Suede and America fuelled my desire to prove to everyone that Blur were worth it ... There was nothing more important in my life." He felt the popularity that American grunge music was enjoying in Britain at the time would soon fade, and argued that Blur would embody a renaissance of classic British pop on their next album. Food Records owner David Balfe strongly disagreed, and argued with Albarn over the proposed change in Blur's image. After the still-sceptical Balfe relented, Food warily gave Blur the go-ahead to work on their second album with Albarn's first choice of producer, XTC leader Andy Partridge. Partridge said he was dissatisfied with the songs, but was "immensely" fond of the band, likening them to XTC circa Go 2. He said he agreed to the project "for the wrong reasons, the flattery and the money."
Blur began working on the album with Partridge at The Church, a studio in Crouch End owned by David A. Stewart. However, the sessions ended prematurely. Bassist Alex James described the sessions as a "disaster"; he added that "as it was all being put together, they were all good parts, but it just wasn't ... sexy". Partridge recalled: "I felt quite fatherly and I thought I did sterling work. They got Dave Balfe really stoned to listen to some mixes and he was rolling around going, 'This is fantastic, you're George Martin and they're The Beatles.' Next day he'd say, 'Quite frankly, Andy, this is shit. The band successfully recorded four songs, but were wary about working in the same conditions again.Harris, 2004, pp. 81–82 The Partridge-produced tracks were abandoned; three were later included on the 2012 boxed set Blur 21.
Work resumed on the album due to a chance meeting with producer Stephen Street, who had previously worked with the band on their 1991 single "There's No Other Way". With Street now producing the album, Blur recorded a mix of material spanning both the period immediately after the release of Leisure and their 1992 tour. While the band members were pleased with the recording session results, Balfe, after hearing the songs, told the band they were committing artistic suicide. Although dejected by his response, Blur gave Food the completed album in December 1992. The label rejected the album and instructed the band to record more potential singles.Harris, 2004, p. 82 Albarn complied, and on Christmas Day wrote the song "For Tomorrow".Harris, 2004, p. 83 Although "For Tomorrow" sated Food's concerns, Blur's American label SBK voiced discontent upon hearing the finished tapes of the album. To appease SBK the band recorded "Chemical World", which Blur thought would increase Rubbishs American appeal. However, Blur refused SBK's demand of re-recording the album with American producer Butch Vig, who was popular at the time for his work with Nirvana.Cavanagh, David; Maconie, Stuart. "How did they do that?". Select. July 1995.
Music and lyrical themes
Modern Life Is Rubbish sound is highly influenced by the traditional guitar pop of English bands such as the Kinks, the Jam, the Small Faces and the Who. The album's songs explore a number of styles—punk rock ("Advert"), neo-psychedelia ("Chemical World"), and vaudeville music-hall ("Sunday Sunday").Erlewine, Stephen Thomas. "Modern Life Is Rubbish review". AllMusic. Retrieved on 27 November 2010. According to music critic Jim DeRogatis, the album “may have been a stylistic mess, but it was valuable psychedelic garbage nonetheless.”
Opening track "For Tomorrow" is, according to NME, "quintessential Blur. Damon, perennially bored, never stops singing, and Graham [Coxon] supplie[s] his usual immaculate guitar accompaniment". While "Oily Water" harked back to the baggy sound of Leisure, NME described "Intermission" as "a pub piano knees-up that rinky-dinks along then gets frazzled in guitars and speeded-up drums". Most of the songs on the album are melodic and lushly produced, often supplemented by a brass section, string arrangements and backing vocals. To offer contrast to the classicist songwriting, AllMusic noted that "Coxon's guitar tears each song open, either with unpredictable melodic lines or layers of translucent, hypnotic effects, and his work creates great tension with Alex James' kinetic bass".
Deriving from "the biting humor of Ray Davies and the bitterness of Paul Weller", Albarn's lyrics on Modern Life Is Rubbish are a social commentary and satire on contemporary suburban English life. While Rubbish celebrates modern British life, it also takes a cynical look at middle-class existence. The overt Anglo-centricism of the album was also retaliation against American popular culture; James later explained, "it was f***ing scary how American everything's becoming ... so the whole thing was a f***ing big two fingers up to America".Redfern, Mark. "Britpop: A Decade On". Under the Radar. Summer 2005. NME summarised the theme of the "thinly-veiled concept album" as a "London odyssey crammed full of strange commuters, peeping Thomases and lost dreams; of opening the windows and breathing in petrol ... It's the Village Green Preservation Society come home to find a car park in its place".
Packaging
The album's title derives from stenciled graffiti painted along Bayswater Road in London, created by an anarchist group.Harris, 2004, p. 88 For Albarn, the phrase reflected the "rubbish" of the past that accumulated over time, stifling creativity. Albarn told journalist John Harris in 1993 that he thought the phrase was "the most significant comment on popular culture since 'Anarchy in the UK.Harris, John. "A shite sports car and a punk reincarnation". NME. 10 April 1993 Due to Blur's disdain for America at the time, the album's working title was Britain Versus America.Sutherland, Mark. "Altered States". Melody Maker. 21 June 1997.
The painting of the steam locomotive Mallard on the album cover was a stock image that Stylorouge—Blur's design consultants—obtained from a photo library in Halifax. According to Design Week magazine, the painting by Paul Gribble (uncle of Stephen Gribble) "evoked the feel of a Just William schoolboy's pre-war Britain".Austin, Jane. "Blurred Vision – Covers of Albums and CDs". Design Week. 2 September 1994. Coxon has stated that the band chose "a Ladybird Books-style painting of the classic Mallard locomotive (because) nothing could be further from what most people expected of an alternative rock LP". Inside the packaging, there is an oil-on-canvas of the band dressed as mop-top skinheads in a tube train. The album's lyric sheets also feature the songs' chord progressions, hand-written by guitar player Graham Coxon. While Albarn explained that it was an attempt to "[let] people to know that, old-fashioned as it might seem, we write songs", Total Guitar magazine attributed the inclusion of the chords to Coxon's "keen[ness] to demystify guitar playing"."Blur's Reluctant Guitar Hero". Total Guitar. 1 September 2001.
Release