Two chords, and a noise for a chorus
The verse is almost nothing, a bass and a mutter, and then the room detonates. Graham Coxon’s guitar is not a riff so much as a wall falling forward. Damon Albarn’s woo-hoo is not a word. It is a pressure release, silly and perfect. Song 2, track two on the album Blur in 1997, lasts about two minutes and behaves like a fire alarm that learned a joke. You can hate the chorus and still be unable to refuse it. The band knew that. They counted on it.
The record was their exit from the Britpop furniture. Produced by Stephen Street in London, with Coxon pushing toward the American records he actually played at home, the album dropped the laddish grin and picked up dirt. Albarn had an acoustic sketch, the woo-hoo already in it. Coxon wanted the thing fast, noisy and horrible enough to frighten their label. They played it while giggling. The label heard a single. The joke failed, and the working title, only an index of its place on the tape, stuck. Street recorded it loud and short. Dave Rowntree hits like a man shutting a door. Alex James’s bass is the only element that bothers to be melodic, and even that melody is a shove.
Britain already knew them. America, which had shrugged at the Kinks pastiches, suddenly had a chorus it could use in adverts, games and sports. The irony travelled badly, which is to say it travelled very well. Sophie Muller’s video, the band in a bare room being thrown about by their own volume, matched the music’s lack of scenery. Live, the song became the moment the set stopped being clever. Two minutes, then back to the longer arguments. Albarn has never pretended the hook was profound. Its lack of profundity is the instrument.
Let’s do it really fast, really noisy, and really horrible, and tell the record label we want to record it as a single. It’ll scare them to death.
(Graham Coxon, Produce Like a Pro)
What the track smuggles, under the shout, is a band changing its clothes in public. Blur the album is full of half-songs, noise, and a singer less interested in being the mayor of a scene. Song 2 is the postcard from that move, simple enough to be mistaken for a surrender to the very rock it was teasing. Listen closer and the verse is still muttering, unimpressed, waiting for the explosion it has already scheduled. The parody and the pleasure occupy the same bar.
What remains is the woo-hoo, which outlived the argument. People who could not name Coxon can sing it. That is a kind of defeat and a kind of victory, and the record is cheerful about both. Song 2 does not develop, does not explain, does not stay. It kicks the door, yells, and leaves the hinge swinging. Some anthems want a legacy. This one wanted a noise, and got a life anyway.
