X-clusive: Graham Coxon Finds Happiness

Onetime Blur guitarist and now fully fledged solo artist Graham Coxon has been speaking to Xfm about his new single not sounding like Blur’s ‘Coffee and TV’, his new album ‘Happiness In Magazines’ and touching up trees.

Speaking to Lauren Lavern on the Xfm Drivetime Show, Coxon explained that the title ‘Happiness In Magazines’, comes from a reaction against the lifestyle magazines that flood British culture.

“It’s their world of aspirations,” he explained, “They’re all about great kitchens, great pots and pans, great bottoms, great suits and great cars. Looking through those magazines isn’t very good for my sense of reality. It makes my reality look an awful lot more dull after seeing those things.”

“I can’t afford to mess about with my sense of what’s real and imaginary at the moment. I’m often tipping too far to the imaginary, so sometimes I have to touch the trees and the roads and go ‘I’m here’. Y’know?”

The guitarist also explained that while his new single ‘Bittersweet Bundle of Misery’ may share a similar rhythm with Blur’s ‘Coffee and TV’ it’s by no means an intentional way of reclaiming the song from his old band.

“It’s not at all a resemblance,” he explained, “Rhythmically it is, but chordally it isn’t at all. Most songs are mostly made up of major or minor chords and there’s a lot of major chords in this like ‘Coffee and TV’, but the shapes of the chord are completely different.”

“I had an awful lot to do with ‘Coffee and TV’. It was an adopted child to me. I started off as an acoustic Damon [Albarn] demo vocal, and I guess I took it the way I thought it would benefit, to write the lyrics and sing it. There will always be similarities between Blur and my stuff as I was responsible for quite a lot of the favour of Blur songs.”

As well as a full UK tour culminating in a date at the Camden Electric Ballroom on June 8, Coxon will also be playing the Carling Weekender Festival, headlining the second stage at the same time The Darkness will be playing the main stage.

“I think it’s ace.” He enthused, “Two loads of Camden layabouts headlining Leeds and Reading? It’s ace!”

'Bittersweet Bundle Of Misery' will be released on May 3 and 'Happiness In Magazines', is due out in May 17.

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