78. ‘Magic America’

On ‘Parklife’. Produced by Stephen Street.

Blur could still get very caustic on the subject of America (see 32, 42). “That’s all part of Blur,” says Graham. “Theme park is death. Mall is death.” Many times during the making of ‘Parklife’, the conversation touched on the frightful American tour of 1992. The theme of ‘Magic America’ was that of a myopic Barratt Home-owner (called Bill Barratt, for added impact) dreaming foolishly of supposed American glamour and glitz. Cruelly, Barratt is revealed not to have even been to America; ‘Magic America’ is the name of a TV porn channel in Milan, Italy and thus a symbol for fantasisers everywhere.

‘Magic America’ has an insane, burbling keyboard solo (at 2.02) from Damon, which Graham likens to the theme tune of the old BBC cartoon Roobarb. Other moments of note are the tweeting noises at 0.01, which Blur’s assistant Jason Cox (see 43) taped off the TV, and the mannered “mm-mmm” (1.54) in the mélange of intertwining vocals.