Chart entered : 27 October 1990
Chart peak : 48
Number of hits : 27
This is a difficult one for me. I struggle with how Blur have achieved the enduring mass audience that many of their chief influences were denied and why other people don't find Damon Albarn's Renaissance Man pretensions as repellent as I do. I have a grudging respect for their achievement in popularising spiky art-pop but they're a band I can never really embrace.
Singer Damon Albarn and guitarist Graham Coxon were childhood friends in Essex. They both went to Goldsmiths College in London where they met bassist Alex James in 1988. Damon was already in a band called Circus and that October they replaced their drummer with Dave Rowntree. After a couple of sackings, Graham and Alex were invited to join the band and they changed their name to Seymour after a J.D. Salinger novel. They soon interested Andy Ross of Food Records but the label didn't like the name and gave them a list of alternatives which included "Blur". In March 1990 they were signed under that name and sent out on tour as support to The Cramps, releasing this debut single after it finished.
"She's So High" is at the more accessible end of the shoegaze sound with a bright melodic guitar riff and hummable chorus compensating for the rather sludgy tempo. The song has minimal repetitive lyrics, more of a mantra about sex and drugs or both, delivered in that familiar needling whine that's always going to be a barrier to me. It's not a bad debut effort though and I'm not surprised it was a minor hit.
I share some of your misgievings on Blur (and Albarn) - they're a band I occasionally like, but never love. However, I'd choose them over their future rivals every day of the week.
ReplyDeleteThis song, I do like, but that they quickly shifted to a "baggy" sound with "There's No Other Way" does suggest an element of bandwagon jumping.