Blur have revealed that their new record ’13’ is inspired by lead singer Damon Albarn‘s heartbreak at splitting with Elastica‘s Justine Frischmann.
“The whole year just forced me to sing about my feelings ‘cos I had nothing left. Eight years with someone – when it finished, it’s a divorce… it’s sad. Really sad,” Damon said in The Facerecently. “You have to be very careful when you write very personal records… It can really fuck you up.”
Damon also refers back to previous fraught times in the band’s history by calling another album track ‘1992’, the year Blur almost split up due to personal and management difficulties. The documentary about the band, Starshaped, which was filmed during 1992 and released the following year, tells the whole sorry tale.
But there is also hope in the record, according to guitarist Graham Coxon. “We’ve found God with this record. This is the Higher Power album. Music is the Higher Power. Man,” he said.
The track listing was only finalised last week, with one of the B-sides of the forthcoming single ‘Tender’, out on March 1, swapped with a prospective album track. ‘Swamp Song’ is now on the album and has been replaced on the single by ‘All We Want’.
Rejected titles for the Blur album included ‘Blue’ and ‘When You’re Walking Backwards To Hell, No-One Can See You But God’. The track listing of ’13’, which is released on March 15 on Food, is ‘Tender’ ‘Bugman’ ‘Coffee & TV’ ‘Swamp Song’ ‘1992’ ‘BLUREMI’ ‘Battle’ ‘Mellow Song’ ‘Trailerpark’ (formerly known as ‘South Park’ and debuted at Glastonbury Festival last year) ‘Caramel’ ‘Trimm Trabb’ ‘No Distance Left To Run’ ‘Optigan 1’.
Blur play their first live date this year at Oxford Brookes University on February 3. Click back soon for details of more live shows.