42. ‘Sunday Sunday’

Single, released 4/10/93. Also on ‘Modern Life is Rubbish’. Produced by Steve Lovell.

Blur’s US tour of 1992 was an exercise in acrimony and misery. Loathing America and often each other (“we all had black eyes,” recalls Dave) they questioned the point of it all. Damon spent one gloomy Sunday watching the soulless antics at a shopping mall from the window of his Minneapolis hotel room. But the lyric he wrote that day refers more to the plastic Sabbath heritage back in England. After the Andy Partridge affair (see 44), Blur were determined to do things their own way. Balfe allowed them to, but was certain they were committing commercial suicide: “When was the last time you heard a hit single that sped up in the middle?” he asks. The result is a brash stomp, enlivened by the Kick Horns’ brilliantly parochial brass, that was worn badly but foreshadows many of the concerns of the latter-day Blur. Graham claims he would not mind if they never played it again. Stephen Street was out of favour, so Balfe returned Blur to Steve Lovell (see 1, 2, 39) as en experiment for this and ‘Villa Rosie’.