FEATURE:
You’re Taking the Fun Out of Everything…
Blur’s There’s No Other Way at Thirty-Five
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EVEN if the track…
IN THIS PHOTO: Blur in May 1991: Alex James, Dave Rowntree, Graham Coxon and Damon Albarn/PHOTO CREDIT: DPA Picture Alliance/Alamy Stock Photo
only has a few different words that are repeated throughout, there is something effective and timeless about Blur’s There’s No Other Way. Having released She’s So High in October 1990, There’s No Other Way was released on 15th April, 1991. I wanted to mark thirty-five years of this phenomenal single. Many don’t place it high in terms of the best Blur songs, though I feel that it is one of their best. The Leisure album does not get much admiration. That arrived on 26th August, 1991. The debut from Blur, it contains many incredible songs. I feel There’s No Other Way is the highlight. I am going to go into a bit more depth about this song. The first feature I want to come to is from Popmatters that was published in 2010. I was seven when this Blur track came out so I don’t really remember it first time around. When I became aware of Blur’s music around 1994/1995, I was listening to There’s No Other Way then. It is this fascinating song that was really unlike what was in the mainstream in 1991:
“Throughout the course of its storied career, Blur more often than not seemed to be playing a role. While the Britpop group’s incarnations as faux-Cockney punters (circa Parklife) and as the British Pavement (Blur) are most often hailed as the band’s high water marks, Blur’s early dabbling in the top trends of the British indie scene at the start of the 1990s—Madchester and shoegaze—on its 1991 debut Leisure is often referred to in less affectionate terms, if at all. In spite of the lack of love for that period, consensus is clear that the record yielded at least one top tune, “There’s No Other Way”, a groovy genre workout that outdid some of the better attempts at crafting danceable Madchester singles by actual Mancunian bands.
Surprisingly for a tune that unashamedly leapt onto the baggy bandwagon, the star of Blur’s second single (and first pop hit) is not any component of the rhythm section, but Graham Coxon and his deliriously sinewy guitar lines. If you ever wondered why some diehard metal musicians and even arch Blur-hater Noel Gallagher will wax enthusiastically about Coxon’s talents, here’s one of the best examples of why. Spooling out indelible riffs like they’re going out of style, Coxon’s playing is quite lyrical, sliding up and down the neck of the instrument with hammer-ons and pull-offs galore adding flair. Some of my favorite moments include Coxon pulling back tastefully after Damon Albarn sings “All that you can do is watch them play” in each chorus, his backward-sounding guitar solo, and the flurry of high-pitched licks that end the track with an ecstatic rush.
Not that the rest of the band are slouches. Listening to how well bassist Alex James and drummer Dave Rowntree groove together here, their efforts on Blur’s 1994 dancefloor-conquering megahit “Girls & Boys” sounds relatively staid. True, Damon Albarn’s lyrics from this period were maddeningly lacking in substance (this being a time before the future Gorillaz mastermind started immersing his work in the quirks and quandaries of the quintessentially English lifestyle), but this was also before he began acting (and singing) like his own exaggerated idea of a working-class football hooligan, which makes him far more bearable here than he is on much of the group’s mid-period material. Albarn is definitely cocky on “There’s No Other Way”, yet he also keeps a distance with his wispy phrasing, teasing the listener into submitting to the tune’s allure with his come-hither delivery.
Comparing this song to, say, the Charlatans’ 1990 hit “The Only One I Know” (which I love, by the way) or pretty much anything by Inspiral Carpets, and “There’s No Other Way” totally outshines those exercises in wedding rock stylings to acid house dance beats. In fact, it synthesizes the (to diehards on both sides of the fence) diametrically-opposed genre elements in a way that few others have matched. And to think, there are still people out there who maintain you can’t dance to guitar music”.
In years since its release, Damon Albarn has branded Leisure as awful. I think he puts distance from it as it was Blur starting out Maybe too much pressure from the label, Food, to release a single. There’s No Other Way the compromise. However, there is something enduring about Leisure. This post argues that there are some diamonds to be found on an album that deserves some new inspection and discussion:
“You’ve got the opener, ‘She’s So High’, the group’s very first single. ‘Sing’ is the somewhat experimental jam and one that people may know from Trainspotting. But the standout, least to me, is one of the album’s other singles, today’s subject, ‘There’s No Other Way’, which I think the band are proud ’cause they usually play it live at every opportunity.
My first experience with the song? Well, it’s a bit like a few others. One of those times when I saw the music video (above) for it on TV, but it was ending, so I wasn’t really aware of what was going on. If you want to what happens in it, Blur sit in with a family at the dinner table and have a three-course meal. Damon Albarn plays, I think, a moody teenager role, making death stares into the camera lens while sporting a ridiculous bowl haircut. Things get freaky when the massive trifle is brought out for dessert. And then the video ends. Probably afraid that the video was just a bit too British-looking, someone convinced the band to do another music video for the song specifically for American audiences. Which one’s better, I’ll let you decide. The original UK video would show up here and there every now and again, and the track’s chorus is repetitive enough that it’ll get stuck in your brain anyway. I got the band’s Best Of compilation, the song’s the third on there, and I’ve been able to listen to it whenever I wanted ever since.
I think I read that the track was written to appease either their record label owner David Balfe who was demanding they write a single to be included on the album. So, in response, the band wrote this upbeat, Madchester-inspired track with a chorus that’s repeated to death. The first line, “You’re taking the fun out of everything”, sums up Albarn’s feelings about this constant pressure forced upon him. He just wants to breathe without this presence breathing down his neck. It wouldn’t be the last time they’d write a tune made to wind Balfe up too. I think Graham Coxon is the real MVP of the entire thing. His riff starts it off, he brings in another riff during the verses, then there’s that little lick that plays after the choruses – all of which I find myself singing along to, sometimes more than Albarn’s vocal. They all go hand in hand. Plus, there’s the backwards guitar solo, which must have taken some time to figure out when writing it the right way round. And away from his guitar skills are his higher harmonizing backing vocals, “There’s no other way, ahhhh ahhhh ahhh” and others. You’ll know when it’s him singing. A very fun song, overall. It’s always a good time”.
Blur’s lyrics definitely became more sophisticated and observational. Maybe Damon Albarn feels There’s No Other Way is the band at a more simple and shallow level. They would shift their sound and improve, though it is unfair to dismiss classics like There’s No Other Way. I am going to finish with this article. The extract is from lengthy interviews conducted in May 1995 with Damon Albarn, Graham Coxon, Alex James, Dave Rowntree, Stephen Street, Dave Balfe and Andy Ross:
“Blur’s intended second single, ‘Bad Day’, had been shelved after an unhappy session which saw Graham play bass in place of Alex, at the behest of the producer Steve Power. Stoned, ‘baggy’ beats were in the ascendant, and the period’s other main genre, ‘shoegazing’ (a term coined by Andy Ross), while commercially redundant compared to Madchester, was a cause celebre in the London-based music mafia, and at ‘indie’ establishments such as the Thursday-nights club Syndrome in Oxford Street.
To compete, Blur were pushed into an area midway between Madchester and shoegazing – where they could hear both trenches but see nothing – and encouraged to go easy on their art-school leanings, going instead for the floating voter with their upbeat ‘indie dance’ songs. ‘There’s No Other Way’ was a single that would unite both dance and indie factions. Yet Blur were, in truth, aligned to neither.
The band’s first recording session with ex-Smiths producer Stephen Street (still Blur’s producer of choice) was at Maison Rouge Studios in Fulham in the first week of January 1991. The session also yielded ‘Come Together’, which they held over for the first album. ‘There’s No Other Way’ had been written quickly by Damon and demoed by the band as a fairly throwaway, non-groovy prototype – until Street bolstered Dave Rowntree with a ‘Funky Drummer’-esqye loop.
Despite being a straightforward dance-pop number with meaningless lyrics, ‘There’s No Other Way’ is enjoyably dumb. Vocally, it recalls Syd Barrett when he was still enjoying himself, circa ‘See Emily Play’, 1967. Like Barrett on that song, Damon and Graham’s harmonized voice almost smile on the choruses, as if in a secret druggy joke. (The fascination of young bands with the 49-year-old, reclusive Roger ‘Syd’ Barrett is easily explained. Barrett – Pink Floyd’s founder, singer-songwriter and guitarist – was an attractive genius who lost his mind in 1967, aged 21. He is thus a sexy, mildly dangerous role model for easy-going, artistic, well-educated, white, English males. Also, trippy. Barrett-like music is fun to write and play.)
As well as the arresting, funky intro, Graham contributes another backwards guitar solo, for added trippiness, and Damon adds a two-note organ part. Alex, contemptuous of the bassist’s role of adhering to the root of hte relevant chord, soars out in counterpoint and has enourmous fun.
‘There’s No Other Way’ reached number 8, but its life is now over. It will never be played live again by Blur. Damon’s prosaic writing songwriting vocabulary, a key offender here, would be cruelly exposed later that yeat on the inner sleeve of ‘Leisure’. In 12 songs, the word “you” appeared 82 times; he used “day”/”say”/”play” rhymes on a shameless 35 occasions. His hazy, lazy, nihilistic thoughts were delivered in a Syd-like twang or a souped-down, southernised Ian Brown whisper. As for their performances on ‘There’s No Other Way’, while by no means disgracing themselves, Blur were about to marginalise themselves perilously on the ‘baggy’/FX-pedals cusp. With their next single ‘Bang’, they would come to be perceived as shallow and limited. In reality they were anything but”.
It is hard to believe There’s No Other Way is thirty-five on 15th April! Such a magnificent song and one of the standout tracks from a year that saw Nevermind by Nirvana released, I do have a lot of affection for Blur on their baggy, Manchester-inspired debut album. Things changed for 1993’s Modern Life Is Rubbish. We should not overlook Leisure and its importance. There’s No Other Way is this stunning song that I have heard hundreds of times and never tire of! The phenomenal second single from one of the…
GREATEST bands ever.