Blur – Girls & Boys (1994) (CD Single)

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Blur – Girls & Boys (1994) (CD Single)

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It's ironic – but what isn't ironic, when it comes to Blur, the most ironic band in pop history – that the single that made Brit-pop a phenomenon had almost nothing to do with what followed, apart from maybe Pulp and the renegade band of freaks that Simon Price labeled as Romos. "Girls & Boys" was retro-new wave disco, a post-modern cross of Duran Duran and Chic. Opening with a bouncing, octave-jumping synth riff that becomes a virtual parody of Eurodisco as soon as the rhythm section kicks in, the undeniably catchy tune at first feels opposed to everything Blur is about, at least on their first two albums. They touched on dance on Leisure, but only as far as it concerned post-baggy hipsters. But here, they made an unabashed dance-club hit. It was only when you dug deeper, looking at the construction and hooks and Damon Albarn's lyrics, that you realized it was totally, undeniably Blur. As a pop song, it is easily one of the best Blur ever recorded (meaning it was one of the best of their era), and they were clever enough (but they ain't half been some clever bastards, have they?) to make it feel exactly like Eurotrash. Not only is the music accurate, they self-consciously twisted the sexuality of the song to make it feel like a bisexual favorite: the chorus is "looking for girls who are boys/who like boys to be girls/who do boys like they're girls/who do girls like they're boys/always should be someone you really love," an absolutely devastating put-down of '90s gender-bending, where even ambi-sexuals didn't know whose fantasy they were fulfilling. Then, the song moves into social commentary – "Avoiding all work/'Cause there's none available" – bringing it around full-circle, as it slowly becomes a picture of a culture, adrift in false expectations, dashed dreams, and media fantasias, that was only willing to celebrate hedonism. In that sense, it was an appropriate christening of the Brit-pop era, where hedonism reigned supreme, but again, most listeners missed the fact that Blur was lampooning this situation, even before it reached critical mass. Of course, when it did become a phenomenon, Blur dived right in, but that doesn't diminish the power of one of their greatest singles. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, allmusic.com