82. ‘Threadneedle Street’

B-side of ‘To The End’ CD and cassette. Produced by Blur.

By spring ’94, Blur were back at Matrix recording a quantity of B-sides for the four singles that were to be culled from ‘Parklife’. The quality of these B-sides would deteriorate alarmingly; the band were already thinking of their next album, and unwilling to raid the demo pantry for B-sides. ‘Threadneedle Street’ is, on first listen, a desolate song that makes radical use of business terminology (“softs”, “futures” etc) to comment on the bleakness of life outside the City. However, the song can now be exposed as an idea knocked together in under half an hour, with Damon quoting liberally from a copy of the Financial Times.