However, the album only charted at number 6 on the Billboard Top Heatseekers album chart in the United States. The album stayed on the chart for 90 weeks. Parklife remains one of the most acclaimed records of the 90s, released in April 1994, debuted at number one on the UK Album Charts. 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. 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 cover refers to the British pastime greyhound racing. 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'. The album was originally going to be entitled London, and the album-cover shot was going to be of a fruit-and-vegetable cart. 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'. 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'. 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. Musicīlur frontman Damon Albarn told NME in 1994, 'For me, Parklife is like a loosely linked concept album involving all these different stories. 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'. The recording was a relatively fast process, apart from the song ' This Is a Low'. Blur met at the Maison Rouge recording studio in August 1993 to record their next album. 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 demoed Albarn's new songs in groups of twos and threes. Therefore Parklife attained a cultural significance above and beyond its considerable sales and critical acclaim, cementing its status as a landmark in British rock music.Īfter the completion of recording sessions for Blur's previous album, Modern Life Is Rubbish, Damon Albarn, the band's vocalist, began to write prolifically. Britpop in turn would form the backbone of the broader Cool Britannia movement. Certified quadruple platinum in the United Kingdom, in the year following its release the album came to define the emerging Britpop scene. 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'. Parklife is the third studio album by the English alternative rock band Blur, released in April 1994 on Food Records. ParklifeĪugust 1993 – January 1994 at Maison Rouge in London For other uses, see Parklife (disambiguation).

Parklife songs