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. 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". 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. 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.

The 44-date tour of the United States left Blur in "complete disarray", according to writer David Cavanagh. listened to a tape of the English pop group the Kinks throughout the tour. 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".

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." The band successfully recorded four songs, but were wary about working in the same conditions again. 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. Albarn complied, and on Christmas Day wrote the song "For Tomorrow". 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.

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"). 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". 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". 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. Due to Blur's disdain for America at the time, the album's working title was Britain Versus America.

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". 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.

Release

To promote Modern Life Is Rubbish, Food released "For Tomorrow" as the album's lead single in the UK in April 1993. The single, which showcased Blur's new sound and attitude, performed moderately well in the charts, reaching number 28. A few weeks later in May 1993, Modern Life was released. The announcement of the album's release included a press photo that featured the phrase "British Image 1" spraypainted behind Blur members (who were dressed in a mixture of mod and skinhead attire) and a Mastiff. At the time, such imagery was viewed as nationalistic and racially insensitive by the British music press; to quiet concerns, Blur subsequently released the "British Image 2" photo, which was "a camp restaging of a pre-war aristocratic tea party". The album peaked at number 15 on the UK Album Chart. In the next few months Food further issued two UK Top 30-charting singles—"Chemical World" and "Sunday Sunday"—to support the record; however, Modern Life only managed to sell around 40,000 copies at the time. Nonetheless, the mood within the Blur camp was positive, as the band felt they had accomplished something; James told writer David Cavanagh in 2000, "Modern Life Is Rubbish was a successful record because it achieved what we set out to achieve. I thought everything was shit except us".

Modern Life Is Rubbish was released in the United States by Blur's American record label SBK in December 1993—seven months after the album's UK release. This delay was because SBK's alternative-music department had closed down; Blur manager Chris Morrison later quipped, "When I asked [SBK] why, they said it was because the girl had left." Despite fears that Modern Lifes overt Englishness would be lost on the American market, SBK insisted on marketing the album to MOR stations and aimed for Top 40 airplay. The label largely ignored Morrison's arguments that Blur's best chance of exposure in America would be to court college radio-stations. The plan fared poorly, as Modern Life had little impact in the US; the album did not chart on the US Billboard 200 and sold only 19,000 copies, a sharp decline compared to the 87,000 units that Leisure shifted.

Contemporary reviews

Among contemporary reviews, NME reviewer Paul Moody was mostly enthusiastic about the record and rated it seven out of ten. While he felt the album had "enough faults to give a surveyor nightmares", he was impressed that, unlike their peers, "Blur [had] thrown on their old clothes and stormed into No Man's Land with all guns blazing". Moody also praised the improvement in Albarn's lyrics, which had hitherto "[made] Eurovision Song Contest entries seem like great works of poetry". Qs David Roberts, in a favourable four out of five star review, called Modern Life "an energised, infectious romp around contemporary little England, by way of an exuberant trawl through a highly-coloured patchwork of its pop past". Roberts placed Coxon as the leading contender for "the vacant crown of <nowiki>[</nowiki>Smiths guitarist] Johnny Marr".

Writing for the Chicago Tribune, rock critic Greg Kot felt the album was a vast improvement over Leisure, which he found "highly derivative" of the Madchester genre. "Nothing on [Leisure] prepares the listener for the adventurousness of Modern Life is Rubbish," he wrote, going on to describe the album as "a swirling, intoxicating song cycle that enriches superior popcraft with wiggy studio experiments." St. Louis Post-Dispatch writer Paul Hampel commended Blur for having "taken a bold step [with Modern Life] – backward", and pointed to their attempt at "a communion with past masters of smart, satirical Brit pop". He concluded his positive review of the album by calling it a "series of pleasant surprises [that] offers numerous signs that great things are to come from Blur".

Aftermath and legacy

In August 1993, Blur set off on the Sugary Tea tour of the UK to promote Modern Life Is Rubbish. Named after a lyric in "Chemical World", the tour was a success, as Blur reclaimed some of their popularity. A key performance was at that year's Reading Festival which, according to David Cavanagh, was "brilliant". On the tour, Blur performed a number of songs that would end up on the group's follow-up album, Parklife (1994). Parklife debuted at number one on the UK charts, and helped Blur emerge as one of Britain's most popular acts. As Jim Shelley wrote in The Guardian, "a year after Blur were dismissed as too mannered, too retrograde and too English, Parklife was embraced for exactly the same reasons". It is seen as one of the early, defining releases of Britpop, a genre that would dominate British pop music in the mid-1990s. Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic felt that "Modern Life Is Rubbish established Blur as the heir to the archly British pop of the Kinks, the Small Faces, and the Jam" and that it "ushered in a new era of British pop". The album was also included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.

Track listing

All lyrics by Damon Albarn.

All music by Damon Albarn/Graham Coxon/Alex James/Dave Rowntree.

Notes

  • Track 7, "Chemical World" ends and "Intermission" begins at 4:02.
  • Track 14, "Resigned" ends and "Commercial Break" begins at 5:13.

American release

The American release of Modern Life Is Rubbish features an altered track listing. Blur's American label SBK Records preferred the group's original demo of "Chemical World", and included it on the album instead of the Stephen Street-produced version. According to Select magazine, this "defeated the object of recording a heavy rock song in the first place".

;Bonus disc notes

  • 15 to 19 from "Popscene" single (March 1992)
  • 20 to 26 from "For Tomorrow" single (April 1993)
  • 27 to 31 from "Chemical World" single (June 1993)
  • 32 to 33 from "Sunday Sunday" single (October 1993)

Personnel

Personnel taken from Modern Life Is Rubbish CD booklet.

Blur

  • Damon Albarn – vocals, piano (tracks 6, "Intermission", "Commercial Break"), sleigh bells (tracks 1, 7), Solina organ (track 1), Casio SK-1 (track 2), Tannoy (track 2), melodica (tracks 6, 14), bingo organ (track 8), Avon Lady keyboard (track 11), Jupiter-8 (track 12), Moog (track 12)
  • Graham Coxon – electric guitars (all tracks), backing vocals, acoustic guitars (tracks 1–3, 5–8, 10–13), tambourine (track 2, 3, 12, 13) percussion (tracks 10), black & decker (track 4), anti cat and dog tone (track 5), volume guitar (track 6), triangle (track 13), slide guitar (tracks 8, 14)
  • Alex James – bass guitar (all tracks), distorted bass (track 11), handclaps (track 3)
  • Dave Rowntree – drums (tracks 1–5, 7–9, 11, 13, 14, "Intermission"), timpani (track 1), handclaps (track 3), loop drums (track 6, 12)

Additional personnel

  • Stephen Street – producer (except "Sunday Sunday" and "Villa Rosie"), drumbox and handclaps (on "Advert"), S1000 (on "Colin Zeal"), typewriter bell (on "Starshaped")
  • Steve Lovell – producer ("Sunday Sunday" and "Villa Rosie")
  • Simon Weinstock – mixer ("Sunday Sunday" and "Villa Rosie")
  • John Smith – engineer; co-producer ("Intermission", "Commercial Break", "Miss America", "Resigned")
  • Blur – producer ("Oily Water"), co-producer ("Intermission", "Commercial Break", "Miss America", "Resigned")
  • Kate St John – oboe, cor anglais, soprano saxophone ("Star Shaped")
  • The Duke String Quartet – strings ("For Tomorrow")
  • Louise Fuller – violin
  • Rick Koster – violin
  • John Metcalfe – viola
  • Ivan McCready – cello
  • with Helen Kamminga – viola
  • Kick Horns – brass ("Sunday Sunday")
  • Tim Sanders – tenor saxophone
  • Roddy Lorimer – trumpet
  • Neil Sidwell – trombone
  • Simon Clarke – baritone and alto saxophone
  • Paul Spong – cornet

Charts

Weekly charts

{| class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders" style="text-align:center;

|+ Chart performance for Modern Life Is Rubbish

|-

!Chart (1993)

!Peak<br/>position

|-

!scope="row"|Australian Albums (ARIA)

| 143

|-

!scope="row"|UK Albums Chart

| 15

|-

|}

{| class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders" style="text-align:center;"

! scope="col"| Chart (2023)

! scope="col"| Peak<br />position

|-

! scope="row"| Hungarian Physical Albums (MAHASZ)

| 22

|-

|}

Certifications

Notes

References

  • Harris, John. Britpop!: Cool Britannia and the Spectacular Demise of English Rock. Da Capo Press. 2004.
  • Maconie, Stuart. 3862 Days: The Official History of Blur. Virgin Books. 1999.
  • Official stream of Modern Life Is Rubbish at YouTube