Blur are back .. but not my 20's

And so, with considerable fanfare, the mighty Blur have finally reformed. If you've kissed goodbye to your 20s, as I have, and were once partial to ringer T-shirts and hairslides, as I was, you no doubt felt delighted to see the return of a quartet whose clever pop soundtracked your first teenage fumblings, and whose simple existence turned your youth technicolour.

But here's a thing: why on earth have they reformed? The simple answer, of course, is the rumoured multimillion pound cheque from Live Nation, quite a nice little earner in these cash-strapped times.

But while many bands reform to top up their pensions, surely Blur don't need to. Damon Albarn definitely doesn't. He's been raking in the simian-shaped bills thanks to Gorillaz and Monkey: Journey To The West. Alex James has been making a mint as a Classic FM DJ and a peddler of cheese. Next to them, Graham Coxon has had a decent solo career, and Dave Rowntree, ever the oddball, has been running for parliament. All those royalties for Parklife and Song 2 will have kept the four of them afloat anyway, so perhaps, as Albarn himself says in this week's NME, there really is something for them to do again.

But when he says "we've got a reason to exist", what does he mean? I've got a few theories. Firstly, today's British indie bands, with the exception of the grand Arctic Monkeys, are a rum old lot. Kaiser Chiefs' football-chant indie has lost its match fitness, Bloc Party's post-punk has gone properly po-faced, and Razorlight are so far up their behinds they're kissing their colons. None of these bands possess a smidgeon of the creativity that Blur had, so perhaps Albarn feels that it's time to lay down the gauntlet.

Secondly, maybe Blur want us to remember how different they were to Oasis and the Verve, the only massive Britpop bands still trading their goods. While the Gallaghers regurgitate Beatles references for the trillionth time, and Richard Ashcroft confuses epic sentiment for an embarrassing whine, Blur had a career that was rich in variety. I'm not saying they're faultless – an opening chord of Stereotypes or Country House, for example, can still make my bile rise. But consider the very different pleasures of She's So High, Beetlebum and Crazy Beat, and you realise, instantly, how rich their wares were.

Finally, Blur's influence is still apparent in contemporary pop. From Lily Allen's forthcoming single, The Fear, to the Wombats' daft Christmas single, I still hear the bright, sprightly Englishness that they helped make so modern. Put all this together with the band's unassailable egos – the one feature of Blur that still blots their copy book – and is it such a surprise that they're back with us? They want to return next July in Hyde Park, like the founding fathers of the music they spawned. And after all, this is how reunion etiquette works. As Blur would put it themselves, there's no other way.

Taken from

http://www.guardian.co.uk