One For All You Justice Yeldham Fans

Back in the heady days of 1996, Damon Albarn was toiling away in Iceland writing songs for an album with Blur that would be precision-tooled to slay the Britpop beast.

Although instrumental in the creation and promotion of the ‘genre’, by this point he had lost all control, as Be Here Now sped its way to becoming one of the fastest-returned albums of all time.

Their next album, he had decided, would be influenced by all that lo-fi American punk nonsense Graham Coxon had been listening to, and would reposition Blur once more as the land’s premier forward-thinking art-punk bastards.

Blur bassist Alex James did what all good bassists do, and ignored all that for one final slice of Britpop pie. As part of Me Me Me with Stephen "No Longer Tin-Tin" Duffy and Justin Welch of Elastica, James co-wrote a trio of songs to soundtrack a Damien Hirst exhibition that generated enough interest to warrant a single release.

Albarn took particular umbrage at the sight of his bassist giving a cheeky wink and a helping hand to the wheezing creature he was trying to kill, but James, doing what all good bassists do, went ahead anyway.

The embodiment of a particularly jaunty day doing nothing in particular, Hanging Around is a triumph of nonsensical lyrics, that oompah thing that Blur didn't actually do as much as detractors would have you believe and a melody that redefines the term nursery rhyme.

Me Me Me - Hanging Around

It's b-side was even more banal, and to and to a young man in Erith dreaming of the stars, even better.

Me Me Me - Tabitha's Island


Casanova Cox