Modern Life Is Rubbish
by Blur

From ShaneSpear TOP 100 COMMENTER 09/09/2013 21:14 | #85564 | TOP COMMENT Vote up your preferred comments and the comments with the most votes will be flagged.

Outside of OK Computer, I don't know if there was ever a more necessary album for the well-being of a band. Blur was a thread away from being dead and buried for good, especially after a brutal trip to the US where our love for grunge was blinding us in 1992 and 1993 (I myself would not hear of Blur until years later.) Luckily the anger and depression of failure provided inspiration, and Blur hit a number of popular records in a row. I understand that the majority of the album is a fuck you to my kind on the other side of the Atlantic, but I have no ill-wills because the music is so good. If in the end America did end up saving Blur, I'm rather proud in a way.

From koner1 TOP 100 COMMENTER 12/22/2014 04:34 | #129867 | TOP COMMENT Vote up your preferred comments and the comments with the most votes will be flagged.

This album is to Leisure what The Bends is to Pablo Honey. There is a humongous artistic growth between this and Leisure. The songwriting is simply much stronger on this album than Blur's debut.

My go to tracks are For Tomorrow and Chemical World!

One of the landmark albums in the 90s. The actual impact it made is as big as that of Nevermind and yet its surprisingly slightly ignored by most list-maniacs and critics.

A brilliant album. Modern life is rubbish, could be looked upon as a first in a trilogy, but whether It is or not, doesn't really matter, it's a great record. Great songs in, advert, pressure on julian(which sounds just like Adam Ant to me), and, starshaped. I do think, leisure, is underrated, but, MLIR, is Blur's first essential record.

Alright, so I listened to Think Tank before I listened to this, so what? Stop judging me with your warm-beer and cricket-loving ways.
But seriously, maybe I should've listened to this one before I listened to blur's last genre-bending effort, in fact maybe I should've bit the bullet and just started with leisure rather than diving head-first into 13, but sadly (as many fans of britpop would know) not everything goes to plan.
This is where blur should've begun their well-chronicled career, rather than getting simultaneously mixed up in the convoluted scenes of shoe gaze and baggy. The songs on here work just as well as telling you about life in England as opposed to, say, shoving the Union Jack down your throat then throwing in a but of tea to wash it down.
Actually ignore that, it seems that I'm now the one who's unfairly generalizing the great nation, but I digress.
For tomorrow is, and will always be, a stellar opener and a gateway into the unknown waters that the four lads had suddenly found themselves treading in. Likewise, advert shows the bands harsher, more punk side that was all but obsolete during leisure.
Whilst I will say that Parklife is a better album, Modern Life is without a doubt the funner of the two, showcasing its knack for dreamy pop songs, with "chemical world", and raucous mosh-anthems that are so apparent in gems such as "Sunday Sunday," and "Coping".
Though everything at this stage in Blur's career may not have been going jackanory just quite yet, it did give the best of us (well, those of us who were alive back then) a telling sign that greater, less-rubbish things were on the horizon.