Peach

The lyrics sheets that accompany Japanese releases are notoriously unreliable. It appears that they’re translated from English to Japanese and back again, with often delightful errors, such as, say, “Chemical waste, best part of the beach”. And there was I thinking it was about being lovesick about some violent hippy chick eating peaches. It’s an anti-Greenpeace song, in which birds have no business nesting anywhere apart of the gaping hole in your head. Morbid stuff.

Very laid-back morbid stuff at that. The song’s strums and echoes recall “Blue Jeans” (which was released later in the same year), and was revealed to be a favourite of Damon’s when Select Magazine did that article about every Blursong. He still played it to himself regularly at the time. It’s doubtful he still does, but “Peach” is definitely yet another embarrassingly amazing “For Tomorrow” b-side, vinyl-skip-gimmick et al.

So You

Sounding like it could grind to a halt at any time, 1999’s “So You” brought together post-Britpop Blur past and future like no song from the era. Its pleasantly underproduced sounds recall the Blur-era recordings while also hinting at Think Tank’s more mellow moments. There’s more than a hint of Gorillaz in the melodica solo, while the words seeming to detail a relationship breakdown echo those of “No Distance Left To Run”. Which it is a b-side of.

Sadly, this song wasn’t ready when Blur released the singles boxset so the only way to obtain it is by buying the single. Or maybe it was ready, but wasn’t released when it could’ve been so as not to take away from the single’s sales. In either case, it’s an absolutely essential little jewel that deserves far more listeners than your average bonus non-album track.

She’s So High

Early in 1995 I decided I needed to learn to play the guitar. From my dad’s dusty bookshelves I grabbed a book of chords, and from my own CD-rack the booklets from the Modern Life Is Rubbish and Parklife albums. “End Of A Century” didn’t sound too difficult. It was. “No problem”, I thought, and tried “Advert”, which only had a few easy chords. Dreadful. Frustrated I began strumming away some random chords, and before I knew it I was playing “She’s So High”, the band’s first single from 1990. I imagine that’s kind of how the band came up with the song, and the lyrics.

Still, it may not have been “Bohemian Rhapsody”, but something was undeniably catchy so it was decided that this should be the song to introduce Blur to the children of the world. Alas, hardly anyone bought it at the time (least of all the children of the world who were in thrall of New Kids On The Block and Milli Vanilli), something not even a small riot caused by feminists over the supposedly sexist imagery on the sleeve could do anything about. Maybe they should’ve brought their boyfriends along.

Apart from being the band’s first official release, “She’s So High” also functioned as the opening track of Leisure, and several alternate (live) takes have been released over time, amongst them an excellent session version recorded at the BBC in 1990 and available on one of the “Music Is My Radar” CD-singles.