It Really Really Did Happen: Review of Blur Live At Wembley Stadium 9th July 2023

Let me tell you about the mind-blowing experience I had at Blur's reunion concert at Wembley Stadium on Sunday, 9th July 2023. It was an absolute blast from start to finish, and I'm still buzzing with excitement. As the much-anticipated Blur tour commenced in 2023, fans across the world eagerly awaited the band's performance at the iconic Wembley Stadium. The anticipation was palpable, and the excitement reached fever pitch as the day of the concert approached.

Blur's return to Wembley Stadium marked a momentous occasion, a celebration of their illustrious career and a testament to their enduring popularity. The band, consisting of Damon Albarn, Graham Coxon, Alex James, and Dave Rowntree, had become synonymous with British music and had captured the hearts of fans for decades.

As soon as I entered the stadium, the atmosphere was electric. The anticipation was palpable, and the crowd's energy was infectious. When Blur finally took the stage, the entire place erupted with cheers and screams. It was like a collective eruption of pure joy.

From the very first note, it was clear that Blur hadn't missed a beat. Their tightness and musicianship were on another level. Damon Albarn's captivating vocals, Graham Coxon's mesmerizing guitar riffs, Alex James' grooving basslines, and Dave Rowntree's impeccable drumming—all came together in perfect harmony. In fact, Damon Albarn sounded better than ever after his scratchy comeback in the Olympics. He has never sounded more like his old self than on Sunday.

Blur's setlist at Wembley Stadium was a carefully curated mix of hits, deep cuts, and surprises that showcased the band's musical prowess and their ability to create a connection with their audience. It was a testament to their enduring popularity and their status as one of Britain's most beloved bands.

The setlist was an absolute treat, spanning their incredible career. Blur's setlist for their epic performance at Wembley Stadium was nothing short of extraordinary. The band curated a dynamic and diverse collection of songs that spanned their illustrious career, taking the audience on a thrilling musical journey. They kicked off the night with the infectious energy of "St. Charles Square," setting the tone for the exhilarating experience that lay ahead.

Classic hits like "There's No Other Way" and "Popscene" had the crowd immediately captivated, with fans singing along to every word. Blur showcased their versatility by delving into their extensive discography, treating the audience to lesser-known gems like "Tracy Jacks," "Villa Rosie," and "Trimm Trabb." These tracks reminded longtime fans of the band's innovative and eclectic sound, while also introducing new listeners to their diverse musical palette.

The setlist featured several beloved hits that have become synonymous with Blur's legacy. Songs like "Beetlebum," "Coffee & TV," and "Country House" had the stadium pulsating with energy, with fans dancing and singing with unbridled enthusiasm. One of the most memorable moments of the night was the performance of "Parklife," featuring a special guest appearance by actor Phil Daniels. The iconic collaboration brought the crowd to a fever pitch, as they enthusiastically joined in to sing along with the beloved anthem.

The encore segment of the setlist was equally captivating. The band returned to the stage with the heartfelt "Lot 105," followed by crowd favorites like "Girls & Boys" and "For Tomorrow." The performance of "Tender," featuring the soulful harmonies of the London Community Gospel Choir, was a truly transcendent moment that moved the audience to their core.

As the concert drew to a close, Blur left an indelible mark with their timeless classics "The Narcissist" and "The Universal." These final songs provided a poignant and cathartic end to an unforgettable night of music.

One of the absolute highlights was their explosive performance of "Song 2." The moment those iconic guitar riffs kicked in, the entire stadium exploded with energy. We all jumped and shouted along to every word. It was an adrenaline rush like no other.

The visual production was a feast for the eyes. The stage design and lighting complemented the music perfectly, creating a mesmerizing atmosphere. The stunning visuals added depth and intensity to the performance, immersing us in a sonic and visual wonderland.

But what truly made the night extraordinary was the connection between the band and the crowd. The energy bouncing back and forth was incredible. Damon Albarn interacted with the audience, drawing us in and making us feel like a part of something special. We were all united by our love for Blur's music, and that feeling of camaraderie was simply magical.

Beyond the music, the visual production added an extra layer of grandeur to the spectacle. Stunning visuals, mesmerizing light displays, and an awe-inspiring stage setup enhanced the overall experience, transforming the concert into a multisensory feast.

As the final notes to The Universal (always the band's closing song) rang out, the crowd erupted in thunderous applause, their energy echoing throughout the stadium. The concert had exceeded all expectations, a triumphant celebration of Blur's legacy and a testament to their enduring impact on the music world.

Blur's performance at Wembley Stadium in 2023 will be etched in the memories of fans forever. It was a night of pure magic, a celebration of music and the unifying power it holds. The band's return to the legendary venue reaffirmed their place as one of Britain's most influential acts, leaving an indelible mark on the rich tapestry of music history woven at Wembley Stadium.

The performance itself was a testament to Blur's musical prowess and their ability to command a stage of such magnitude. Damon Albarn's charismatic presence, Graham Coxon's mesmerizing guitar skills, Alex James' infectious basslines, and Dave Rowntree's impeccable drumming created a sonic tapestry that enthralled fans old and new.

Leaving the concert, my heart was full, and my voice was hoarse from singing and shouting with thousands of other Blur fans. It was an experience I'll cherish forever, a night that reminded me why I fell in love with music in the first place. Blur's reunion concert at Wembley Stadium was an absolute triumph—a celebration of music, nostalgia, and the incredible power of shared moments.

SETLIST for Blur on 9th July 2023

1. St. Charles Square 2. There's No Other Way 3. Popscene 4. Tracy Jacks 5. Beetlebum 6. Trimm Trabb 7. Villa Rosie 8. Stereotypes 9. Out of Time 10. Coffee & TV 11. Under the Westway 12. End of a Century 13. Sunday Sunday 14. Country House 15. Parklife (with Phil Daniels) 16. To the End 17. Oily Water 18. Advert 19. Song 2 20. This Is a Low Encore: 21. Lot 105 22. Girls & Boys 23. For Tomorrow 24. Tender (with London Community Gospel Choir) 25. The Narcissist 26. The Universal

Damon Albarn Releases New Song 'The Tower of Montevideo'

Damon Albarn has released a brand new track. Titled ‘The Tower Of Montevideo’, it’s the latest to be lifted from his new solo album ‘The Nearer The Fountain, More Pure The Stream Flows’, which is set to arrive on 12th November 2021. You can check out the track now via a live video directed by Transgressive Records founder Toby L.

Speaking to NME ahead of the album’s release, Albarn expounded on how it was conceptualised as a way to lift him out of the “storms” of the outside world and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. “I just felt like the beginning of this year was so grim and I had to do something to lift me out of those, I wouldn’t call doldrums, but storms – those terrible north wind storms that you get down by the sea in Devon sometimes,” he explained.

Damon Albarn is set to perform in a new tour next February for a run that includes two nights at London’s Barbican Hall.

The singer recently a cryptic message: "At the end of the world, Stay by my side" while posting a photo of himself playing the piano over the sunset. 

Damon Albarn finally passes his driving test at 52

 Damon Albarn has finally passed his driving test at age 52 after not learning to drive all of his life. 

The Sun reported that Damon bought a £65,000 Range Rover as his first car. The Blur frontman, who has a fortune worth £10 million, decided to learn to drive to make it easier to get between his west London pad and his big house in the country in Devon.

His fancy new car goes from 0 to 60mph in eight seconds and has a top speed of 130mph – much speedier than most new drivers’ first set of wheels. 

Damon spent most of the UK lockdown in an isolated farmhouse in South Devon which he bought in 1995 with his “ill-gotten gains from Parklife”. 

He previously told a newspaper: “It was the first time I ever had any money and it was the first thing I ever bought. “Everyone’s been telling me I’ve been mad for years. Why did you buy this remote farmhouse in the middle of nowhere? But now everyone thinks I’m a genius.”

He used the extra free time during the pandemic to practise for his driving test having lost his licence 20 years ago and “never bothered” to get it back.

A friend of the singer, who is now 53, told the Mail on Sunday: “Damon loved his time in Devon during lockdown and would love to spend much more time there. “But getting there on public transport would be a nightmare, so he decided to take the plunge and finally learn to drive himself around.” 

They added he had been practising his driving with his partner Suzi Winstanley,, the mother to their daughter Missy, 21.

Looks like Damon put his free time to good use! 

Damon Albarn on Gorillaz's low-key album (featuring Noel Gallagher) The Now Now

So Damon Albarn has finally opened up about his mysterious new Gorillaz album, The Now Now. According to a recent interview, "Unlike so many of their previous releases, the band’s latest, The Now Now (due June 29), is a comparatively intimate affair, minus the usual wide-ranging guest roster — Humanz alone featured Noel Gallagher, De La Soul, Vince Staples, Popcaan, and Grace Jones, among others — and attendant Mt. Everest of studio coordination such a major undertaking involves.

Frontman Damon Albarn, who turned 50 this spring, was happy to swerve into Now‘s simpler, more stripped-down territory, enlisting drop-ins from just a few select friends (Snoop Dogg and 75-year-old jazz-guitar legend George Benson), and production by James Ford (Arctic Monkeys, Mumford & Sons, Depeche Mode) and longtime collaborator Remi Kabaka."

Quoting from his latest interview in June 2018, Albarn says:

”This record was really easy to make. I did it in a month with just James Ford and Remi, and finished it at the end of February, which, that’s quite nice, you know?”

The album is mostly sung by Damon Albarn himself, instead of his usual hiding behind the multiple collaborators that made Gorillaz famous.

 “So if you don’t like my voice, it’s probably not worth investigating this record. If you do like my voice, I would strongly recommend you buy it. Not that it’s so divisive, but it’s an acquired taste, really.”

“My voice has gotten a lot better,” Albarn said. “A lot richer and deeper, I think. [But] I wouldn’t say I like it. I’m permanently dissatisfied, period, with what I do. I have little glimpses when I’m making something, like, ‘Ahhhh, I love this! This is great!’ And then that moment ends and I just sort of return to, ‘Am I ever really gonna find — I don’t know what it is, but am I ever really gonna find it?’ I don’t know.”

“The record’s all over the place, really,” he says, “but mainly, it’s songs written from the tops of buildings or on buses in America.” One track, “Idaho,” was in fact inspired by a specific trip out West. “We’d just played Red Rocks, so it was on the way from there to Seattle. We spent two days up in the mountains in this very beautiful place, very disconnected — almost like a land that time forgot.

I’ve visited the States a lot, but it’s the first time I actually paused in the great vast wilderness that is America. I couldn’t get enough of it, actually.” Those tracks called “Kansas” and “Hollywood” though? Don’t read too much into them. While he did book a recording session in an appropriately louche hotel penthouse overlooking Sunset Boulevard, “There’s no actual connection,” he says. “Sometimes my original GarageBand [software] titles just stay. I know where the words came from, but not why.”

\

So apart from being inspired by America, what's next for Albarn? Lots, according to him.

“I’ve made two records this year so far,” he says. Well, technically it’s three. Gorillaz, one from the Good, the Bad, & the Queen, and a collaboration with South African artists. “I mean it’s only June,” he says, “and I’ve been in South Africa, I’ve been in Mali, I’ve been all over South America… Mali is fascinating, and I just keep going back there. It has a very strong classical tradition with a lot of complicated music that you have to learn from a very young age.

I struggle with some of it, I really do, but I love that about it. I’m just learning how to become adequate on the balafon, and I ended up having lessons with a 12-year-old prodigy, an absolute genius… I’ll actually be doing something soon in Mali and in Paris about Sundiata, who was a sort of semi-mythical first emperor.”

New Gorillaz Album is Finished - Release Date and more!

Damon Albarn recently announced that the new Gorillaz album is finished and that rehearsals are currently underway. The mega-successful cartoon band are currently gearing up to release their first full-length record since 2011’s ‘The Fall’, and last month released the first single – ‘Hallelujah Money’, featuring former Mercury Prize-winner Benjamin Clementine – from the as-yet-untitled album.

No official word has been spread about the possible release date. Jack Winstanley (@_JackWinstanley) posted a series of tweets after meeting the Blur frontman outside the gig venue where he works earlier this week, writing that Albarn had told him that the album is ‘finished’ and that tour preparations are underway.

With this in mind, perhaps a spectulative release date would be sometime within the next 2-3 months- perhaps in May or June. We should be expecting a single to be released earlier so this is great news for fans.

Stay tuned for more news.

Blur's Damon Albarn visits and performs at Banksy's Dismaland

The rumours were rife that someone big was going to make a surprise appearance at Banky's Dismaland for its final night of music after Massive Attack pulled out. And it was Blur frontman Damon Albarn who surprised the crowds a few weeks ago during the last week of Banksy's exhibition.

Wearing a mask over his face, as Banksy requested all guests did on Friday night so that he could attend himself, Albarn ran on stage to join De La Soul for a rendition of The Gorillaz' Feel Good Inc. Last night also saw performance from Pussy Riot, Kate Tempest and Leftfield. De La Soul also performed their "Me, Myself & I" during the "Masked Ball" performance.

According to the Bristol Post, Albarn along with many of the Dismaland guests wore masks so Banksy – himself disguised – could attend the concert and not have his identity revealed. "Dress code – due to the amount of paparazzi staking out the park in recent weeks Banksy has requested people come masked-up so he can attend the event without being photographed," a Dismaland statement said.

Banksy and Albarn previously worked together when the artist designed the cover image of Blur's Think Tank. They joined the likes of Fatboy Slim, Run the Jewels and Savages who have taken it in turns to fill the Friday night music slot during Dismaland's five week run in the former Tropicana site in Weston-super-Mare.

Gorillaz confirmed to make a new album in 2016

We've got great news for all Gorillaz fans. Damon Albarn has just revealed in a recent interview with The Sydney Morning Herald that his animated band Gorillaz will make a new album i 2016.

In the interview, he mentioned that Gorillaz is already in the process of "reactivating" for a potential 2016 album. This means that fans will be hearing brand new Gorillaz songs as early as next year, and possibly enjoy a full Gorillaz world tour in 2016 after their album release.

If Gorillaz produces a new LP, it would be the band’s fifth album, and first since 2011’s ipad-recorded The Fall.

But what about his other band Blur? Of this, Damon Albarn said: “I would imagine there’s some kind of future,” he said in the interview, “but at the moment there’s no time for the future – only the present. Who knows? I’m reluctant to say anything, because if I do, it just gets taken out of context and then I’m accused of being a wind-up.”

10 ways Britpop changed Manhood - Blur feature

The Telegraph recently featured a great article on the 10 ways Britpop changed modern Manhood. The brilliant piece features Blur, Damon Albarn and lists the top ten ways in which the Britpop musical era shaped modern Britain and it's people.

Some notable excerpts include:

1. It made us patriotic: Pre-Britpop, we looked across the Atlantic for cool, exciting new stuff: be it grunge or hip-hop, action blockbusters or cult Tarantino films, Friends or The X-Files. But for five halcyon years in the mid-90s, Blighty was where it was at: Blur vs Oasis, Cool Britannia, Euro ’96, TFI Friday, Lock Stock, Spice Girls, Young British Artists, Trainspotting… We were reminded of the greatness on our own doorstep.

9. It made us culturally cleverer: Britpop is often stereotyped as lumpenly thuggish but it made young men smarter too. In their lyrics and interviews, Damon Albarn, Brett Anderson and Jarvis Cocker were our literate, art-schoolish big brothers in the way Morrissey was a decade earlier.

"Art-schoolish big brothers"

Click HERE to read the full article.

Damon Albarn protests for Greenpeace Arrests

Actor Jude Law and musician Damon Albarn have joined around 800 people protesting outside the Russian Embassy in London over the arrest of 30 Greenpeace activists.

The pair, along with Paul Simonon from The Clash, have called the arrests a disgrace and described them as a personal blow as their friend Frank Hewetson is among those being held.

Relatives of the activists have also organised several protests across the country for the six Britons who are in custody, and a further 47 demonstrations are being held around the world.

(Source: Daily Mail)

Blur- Splitting up was best thing we ever did

Blur bass player Alex James says that that best thing the band ever did was split up and that Damon Albarn and Noel Gallagher are now best mates who smoke cigars together.

Blur bass player Alex James says that that best thing the band ever did was split up and that Damon Albarn and Noel Gallagher are now best mates who smoke cigars together.

Speaking ahead of Blur's gig at IMMA, Dublin on Thursday, August 1st with support from Bat for Lashes and The Strypes, James told Today FM's Ray D'Arcy about his new life as a cheesemaker and farmer.

"Blur came to an end in 2003 and at that point we'd been doing the same thing for 15 years and after that amount of time it does become cyclical," he said. "We needed to go off and do other things. 

"We've all worked with other people since then. I think splitting up was the best thing we ever did." 

During the interview, D'Arcy recalled having the old Blur vs Oasis argument with his friends "in Snaffles Nightclub in Kildare" and asked James who did he think eventually won The Battle of Britpop.

"It's funny because these days Damon and Noel are best mates," James said. "They go off and smoke cigars together. I think we realised we were all on the same side eventually."

 The 44-year-old father of five now lives on a farm in Berkshire and makes cheese. "People throw cheese at me when I'm on stage. Some musicians get underwear," he said.

"Ireland is a fantastic place for cheese. I was over there last year looking at Bries. "There are so many great Irish cheeses. Did you know Brie was invented in Ireland? The French monks took it back to Normandy. They stole it!"

Asked what was the most rock `n' roll thing he'd ever done, James said, "We sent a spaceship to Mars."

(Source)

Blur Tour 2013 - Full dates and rundown  HERE
Blur @ Coachella- video and image gallery HERE 

Blur confirmed for Mexico HERE

Blur Europe Tour News  HERE

Order the new Blur: Parklife (Live at Hyde Park CD / DVD) HERE

SUBSCRIBE NOW!

If you missed old news, visit the NEWS ARCHIVE to read about past news!

Remember to subscribe to RSS and "LIKE" BlurBalls on Facebook.