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Parklife is the third studio album by the English alternative rock band Blur, released in April 1994 on Food Records. After disappointing sales for their previous album Modern Life Is Rubbish (1993), Parklife returned Blur to prominence in the UK, helped by its four hit singles: "Girls & Boys", "End of a Century", "Parklife" and "To the End". Certified quadruple platinum in the United Kingdom, in the year following its release the album came to define the emerging Britpop scene. Britpop in turn would form the backbone of the broader Cool Britannia movement. Parklife therefore attained a cultural significance above and beyond its considerable sales and critical acclaim, cementing its status as a landmark in British rock music.

Background
Blur's previous album, Modern Life Is Rubbish had sold dissapointingly, despite critical acclaim. Nonetheless, the mood within the Blur camp was positive, as the band felt they had accomplished something with bassist Alex James stating that "it achieved what we set out to achieve." Since the completion of recording sessions for Modern Life Is Rubbish, Damon Albarn, the band's vocalist, had begun to write prolifically. In August 1993, Blur set off on the Sugary Tea tour of the UK to promote the album where they performed a number of songs that were intended for the group's follow-up.

Recording
Blur demoed Albarn's new songs in groups of twos and threes. Due to their precarious financial position at the time, Blur quickly went back into the studio with producer Stephen Street to record their third album. Blur met at the Maison Rouge recording studio in August 1993 to record their next album. The recording was a relatively fast process.

A demo version of "Parklife" had been recorded in May 1993. Street saw a potential hit record and set to work. Rowntree recorded live drums over a drum machine and smashed some plates to simulate the sound of glass being smashed five seconds in. The demo featured Albarn doing the narraration, however Albarn claimed that the mockney accent felt forced claiming “I create these characters but I can’t really       be them. It’s too difficult.” Albarn contacted Phil Daniels, an idol of him and Coxon, to do a narraration on "The Debt Collector". However, unable to write the narraration, Albarn thought "Fuck it, he could do "Parklife"". Daniels' vocals were recorded in three takes.

"This Is a Low" almost never made it onto the album. According to James, Albarn was finding it hard to write lyrics. In James' autobiography, Bit Of A Blur, he revealed that "for Christmas I bought [Albarn] a handkerchief with a map of the shipping forecast regions on it... you can never tell where the muse is going to appear." “We always found the shipping       forecast soothing,” James explained. “We used to       listen to it [on the american tour] to remind us of home. It’s       very good for a hangover. Good cure for insomnia,       too.”         On 4 February 1994, the        penultimate day of official recording, Albarn was        due to go into hospital for a hernia operation. Pressured to come up with the lyrics, Albarn took advantage of the map James had given him. “I’d had this line – ‘And into       the sea go pretty England and me’ – for a long        time", Albarn revealed. "So I started at the Bay of Biscay. Back for tea. ‘Tea’ rhymes with ‘me’. And then I       went ‘Hit traffic on the Dogger Bank’. ‘Bank’ – ‘rank’ – so       ‘up the Thames to find a taxi rank’. And I just       went round.” In the guitar solo, Graham Coxon played three solos, including       one of him sat in front of his amp, turned up to maximum        volume.

While the members of Blur were pleased with the final result, Food Records owner David Balfe was not pleased with the record, telling the band's management "This is a mistake". Soon afterwards, Balfe sold Food to EMI.

Music
Blur frontman Damon Albarn told NME in 1994, "For me, Parklife is like a loosely linked concept album involving all these different stories. It's the travels of the mystical lager-eater, seeing what's going on in the world and commenting on it." Albarn cited the Martin Amis novel London Fields as a major influence on the album. The songs themselves span many genres, such as the synthpop-influenced hit single "Girls & Boys", the instrumental waltz interlude of "The Debt Collector", the punk rock-influenced "Bank Holiday", the spacey, Syd Barrett-esque "Far Out", and the fairly New Wave-influenced "Trouble in the Message Centre". Journalist John Harris commented that while many of the album's songs "reflected Albarn's claims to a bittersweet take on the UK's human patchwork", he stated that several songs, including "To the End" and "Badhead" "lay in a much more personal space".

Content
The albums opener, "Girls and Boys" is a heavily disco-influenced song, pitched at the "long forgotten" 120bpm. The lyrics, a piss take on hedonistic vacationers was inspired by a holiday Albarn and his then-girlfriend, Justine Frischmann had taken in Magaluf, Majorca.

Title and cover
The album was originally going to be entitled London, and the album-cover shot was going to be of a fruit-and-vegetable cart. Albarn stated, "That was the last time that Dave Balfe was, sort of, privvy to any decision or creative process with us, and that was his final contribution: to call it London". Another proposal was to name the album, "Soft Porn", with an image of Buckingham Palace on the cover. The cover refers to the British pastime greyhound racing. Most of the pictures in the CD booklet are of the band in the greyhound racing venue Walthamstow Stadium, although the actual cover was not shot there. The album cover for Parklife was among the ten chosen by the Royal Mail for a set of "Classic Album Cover" postage stamps issued in January 2010.

Reception
Parklife remains one of the most acclaimed albums of the '90s, released in April 1994, debuted at number one on the UK Album Charts. The album stayed on the chart for 90 weeks. However, the album only charted at number 6 on the Billboard Top Heatseekers album chart in the United States. Johnny Dee, reviewing Parklife for NME, called it "a great pop record", adding "On paper it sounds like hell, in practice it's joyous." Rolling Stone gave the album four out of five stars. Reviewer Paul Evans wrote, "With one of this year's best albums, [Blur] realize their cheeky ambition: to reassert all the style and wit, boy bonding and stardom aspiration that originally made British rock so dazzling." AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine commented: "By tying the past and the present together, Blur articulated the mid-'90s zeitgeist and produced an epoch-defining record." Conversely, Robert Christgau stated that the only good song on the album was "Girls & Boys".

Awards, Accolades and Legacy
Parklife has been receiving accolades since its official release and is largely seen not only as one of the best albums of 1994 and its decade, but of all time. The album was nominated to the 1995 Mercury Prize, but it lost to M People's Elegant Slumming. Blur also won four awards at the 1995 Brit Awards, including Best British Album for Parklife. The album was listed as one of the 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.

In 2006, British Hit Singles & Albums and NME organised a poll of which, 40,000 people worldwide voted for the 100 best albums ever and Parklife was placed at #34 on the list. The album has been hailed as a "Britpop classic". Parklife influenced a number of British guitar bands, including Pulp, The Boo Radleys, Supergrass, Gene, Echobelly and Menswear.

Track listing
All music by Blur and all lyrics by Damon Albarn, except "Far Out" lyrics by Alex James.
 * 1) "Girls & Boys" – 4:50
 * 2) "Tracy Jacks" – 4:20
 * 3) "End of a Century" – 2:46
 * 4) "Parklife" (starring Phil Daniels) – 3:05
 * 5) "Bank Holiday" – 1:42
 * 6) "Badhead" – 3:25
 * 7) "The Debt Collector" – 2:10
 * 8) "Far Out" – 1:41
 * 9) "To the End" – 4:05
 * 10) "London Loves" – 4:15
 * 11) "Trouble in the Message Centre" – 4:09
 * 12) "Clover Over Dover" – 3:22
 * 13) "Magic America" – 3:38
 * 14) "Jubilee" – 2:47
 * 15) "This Is a Low" – 5:07
 * 16) "Lot 105" – 1:17

Personnel

 * Damon Albarn – lead-backing vocals, keyboards, hammond organ, moog synthesizer, machine strings, harpsichord on "Clover Over Dover", melodica, vibraphone, recorder, programming
 * Graham Coxon – backing vocals, guitar, clarinet, saxophone, percussion
 * Alex James – vocals on "Far Out", bass guitar, crowd noise
 * Dave Rowntree – drums, percussion, programming, crowd noise

Additional musicians

 * Stephen Street – vintage keys, sound effects, some programming
 * Laetitia Sadier – vocals on "To the End"
 * Phil Daniels – narration on "Parklife"
 * Stephen Hague – accordion

String quartet

 * Chris Tombling
 * Audrey Riley
 * Leo Payne MBE
 * Chris Pitsillides

Duke strings

 * Louisa Fuller – violin
 * Rick Koster – violin
 * Mark Pharoah – violin
 * John Metcalfe – string arrangement, viola
 * Ivan McCready – cello

Kick horns

 * Richard Edwards – trombone
 * Roddy Lorimer – flugelhorn, trombone
 * Tim Sanders – tenor sax, soprano sax
 * Simon Clarke – baritone sax, alto sax, flute