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Damon Albarn May Have Played a New Blur Song at Poetry Olympics

Damon Albarn

“More champagne,” requests Damon Albarn drolly, after messing up the guitar intro to a new song during his solo set at London’s Poetry Olympics. When his bubbly finally arrives, after a brief organ interlude, he tells the audience, “I just recorded [this song] last week,” before playing what many people, including the fan who captured it on the video below, are speculating is a new song by his band Blur. But right now all it can be is speculation.

The group, which is playing a show with New Order and the Specials in London to commemorate the end of the 2012 Summer Olympics in August, has had its soap opera-like ups and downs lately. In February, the group’s guitarist, Graham Coxon, told the Daily Record that the group was recording a new album, and later that month he and Albarn premiered new song “Under the Westway.” Then in April, Albarn alluded that both Blur and his other group, Gorillaz, were dead in the water, later clarifying that the group would revisit the state of the band after the Olympics show. Nevertheless, producer William Orbit reported in May that recording had ceased.

Regardless of the drama, here is the new, as-yet-untitled song that Albarn recorded last week — with or without Blur. The tune itself (which you can hear sans champagne mischief by scrolling to around 2:30) is a light, bouncy melodic number with a big chorus, infectious “lalala” outro and lyrics about some kind of disillusionment and romance — at least from what we can tell through the echoing reverb in the video. Consequence of Sound reports the song will be “coming out in a few weeks,” though that line is inaudible in the video. But even if it doesn’t pan out to be a sign of new Blur records to come, at least we’ll have a broken shelf from the weight of the 21-disc Blur box set dropping in July.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/7zpRDUCF60Y?version=3