Parklife
Studio album by Blur
Released	25 April 1994
Recorded	August 1993 – February 1994
Studio	Maison Rouge,Fulham, London RAK, London
Genre	Britpop
Length	52:40
Label	Food
Producer	Stephen Street Stephen Hague John Smith Blur
Blur chronology
Modern Life Is Rubbish (1993) Parklife (1994) The Great Escape (1995)
Singles from Parklife
"Girls & Boys" Released: 8 March 1994[1] "To the End" Released: 30 May 1994[2] "Parklife" Released: 22 August 1994[3] "End of a Century" Released: 7 November 1994[4] "Tracy Jacks" Released: December 1994 (US only)

Parklife is the third studio album by the Englishrock bandBlur, released on 25 April 1994, byFood Records. After moderate sales for their previous albumModern Life Is Rubbish (1993),Parklife returned Blur to prominence in the UK, helped by its four hit singles: "Girls & Boys", "To the End",Parklife and "End of a Century".

Certified four times platinum in the United Kingdom by theBritish Phonographic Industry (BPI),^[5] the album came to define the emergingBritpop scene in the year following its release, along with the albumDefinitely Maybe by future rivalsOasis. Britpop in turn would form the backbone of the broaderCool Britannia movement.Parklife therefore has attained a cultural significance beyond its considerable sales and critical acclaim, cementing its status as a landmark in British rock music.^[6]

In 2010,Parklife was one of ten album covers from British artistscommemorated on a UK postage stamp issued by theRoyal Mail.^[7][8] In 2015,Spin included the album in their list of "The 300 Best Albums of 1985–2014".^[9]Rolling Stone magazine ranked the album number 438 in its 2020 list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time".^[10]

In 1990, a year before Blur's debut album,Damon Albarn, the band's vocalist, had told a group of music journalists, "When our third album comes out, our place as the quintessential English band of the '90s will be assured. That is a simple statement of fact. I intend to write it in 1994."^[11]

After the completion of recording sessions for Blur's previous album,Modern Life Is Rubbish, Albarn began to write prolifically. Blur demoed Albarn's new songs in groups of twos and threes.^[12] Due to their precarious financial position at the time, Blur quickly went back into the studio with producerStephen Street to record their third album.^[13] Blur met at the Maison Rouge recording studio in August 1993 to record their next album.^[12] The recording was a relatively fast process, apart from the song "This Is a Low".

While the members of Blur were pleased with the final result, Food Records ownerDavid Balfe was not, telling the band's management "This is a mistake". Soon afterwards, Balfe sold Food toEMI.^[14]

Blur frontmanDamon Albarn toldNME 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 theMartin Amis novelLondon Fields as a major influence on the album.^[15]Oasis guitaristNoel Gallagher was once quoted saying thatParklife was, "Like Southern England personified".^[16] The songs themselves span many genres, such as thesynthpop-influenced hit single "Girls & Boys", the instrumentalwaltz interlude of "The Debt Collector", the punk rock-influenced "Bank Holiday", the spacey,Syd Barrett-esque "Far Out",^[17] and the fairlynew 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", several songs, including "To the End" (featuringLætitia Sadier ofStereolab) and "Badhead" "lay in a much more personal space".^[18]

The album was originally going to be entitledLondon and the album cover shot was going to be of a fruit-and-vegetable cart. Albarn stated tongue-in-cheek, "That was the last time thatDave Balfe was, sort of, privy to any decision or creative process with us, and that was his final contribution: to call itLondon".^[19] The cover depicts the British pastime ofgreyhound racing.^[20] Most of the pictures in the CD booklet are of the band in the greyhound racing venueWalthamstow Stadium, although the actual cover was not shot there.^[21] Thealbum cover forParklife was among the ten chosen by theRoyal Mail for a set of "Classic Album Cover" postage stamps issued in January 2010.^[22][23]

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[24]
Chicago Tribune	[25]
Encyclopedia of Popular Music	[26]
Los Angeles Times	[27]
NME	9/10[28]
Pitchfork	9.5/10[29]
Q	[30]
Rolling Stone	[31]
The Rolling Stone Album Guide	[32]
Select	5/5[33]

Parklife was met with critical acclaim. Johnny Dee, reviewingParklife forNME, called it "a great pop record", adding "On paper it sounds like hell, in practice it's joyous."^[28] Paul Evans ofRolling Stone stated that with "one of this year's best albums", the band "realize their cheeky ambition: to reassert all the style and wit, boy bonding and stardom aspiration that originally made British rock so dazzling."^[31] Conversely,Robert Christgau ofThe Village Voice indicated that the only good song on the album was "Girls & Boys".^[34]

Parklife remains one of the most acclaimed albums of the 1990s. In a retrospective review,AllMusic'sStephen Thomas Erlewine commented: "By tying the past and the present together, Blur articulated the mid-'90s zeitgeist and produced an epoch-defining record."^[24]

Upon release,Parklife debuted at number one on theUK Albums Chart and stayed on the chart for 90 weeks.^[35][36] It reached number six on theBillboardTop Heatseekers album chart in the United States.^[37] In the UK it sold 27,000 copies in its first week and would see a resurgence in sales the week before Christmas of 1994, with weekly sales of 40,000.^[38]Parklife is Blur's bestselling studio album in the UK, with just over a million copies sold.^[38]

Parklife has received accolades since its official release and is largely seen as one of the best albums of the 1990s. The album was nominated to the 1994Mercury Prize, but it lost toM People'sElegant Slumming.^[39] Blur also won four awards at the 1995Brit Awards, including Best British Album forParklife.^[40] The album was listed as one of the1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.^[41]

In 2000 it was voted number 95 inColin Larkin'sAll Time Top 1000 Albums.^[42] He stated "Parklife was a stunning album of high-quality, undeniably English pop."

In 2003,Pitchfork placed the album at number 54 on theirTop 100 Albums of the 1990s list.^[43] In 2006,British Hit Singles & Albums andNME organised a poll of which, 40,000 people worldwide voted for the 100 best albums ever andParklife was placed at number 34 on the list.^[44] The album has been hailed as a "Britpop classic".^[45]

In April 2014, AmericanLGBT magazineMetro Weekly ranked the album at number 29 in its list of the "50 Best Alternative Albums of the 90s".^[46] In July 2014,Guitar World placedParklife in its "Superunknown: 50 Iconic Albums That Defined 1994" list.^[47] The album was ranked at number 171 onSpin's "The 300 Best Albums of the Past 30 Years (1985–2014)" list.^[48] In 2017,Pitchfork listed the album at number two in its list "The 50 Best Britpop Albums".^[49] In 2020,Rolling Stone ranked the album at number 438 in their list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time".^[10]

Bonus disc notes

• 17 to 20 from "Girls and Boys" single (March 1994)
• 21 to 23 from "To the End" single (May 1994)
• 24 to 27 from "Parklife" single (August 1994)
• 28 and 29 from "End of a Century" single (November 1994)
• 30 and 31 previously unreleased BBC Radio 1 –Simon Mayo, 1994
• 32 from "End of a Century" Spanish CD Promo
• 33 is previously unreleased

• Damon Albarn – lead and backing vocals, piano,Hammond organ,Mellotron,Moog synthesiser,melodica,vibraphone, recorder,programming,harpsichord,string synthesiser
• Graham Coxon – electric and acoustic guitars, backing vocals, clarinet, saxophone, percussion
• Alex James – bass guitar, vocals on "Far Out", crowd noise
• Dave Rowntree – drums, percussion, programming, crowd noise

• Harris, John (2004).Britpop! Cool Britannia and the Spectacular Demise of English Rock.Da Capo Press.ISBN 0-306-81367-X.

• Parklife atYouTube (streamed copy where licensed)
• Parklife atDiscogs (list of releases)

• Albums produced by Damon Albarn
• Albums produced by Stephen Street
• Blur (band) albums
• Food Records albums
• 1990s concept albums
• 1994 albums
• Albums produced by Stephen Hague
• Albums recorded at RAK Studios
• Brit Award for British Album of the Year

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