Stereotypes.

Is it possible that the verses to this song, which are typical of The Kinks-esque satirical character songs that Albarn wrote for The Great Escape, actually seek to deflect attention from the autobiographical germ which you can still hear in the chorus? Was this what all the satire was for – to conceal the extent of his despair? Certainly, lines like ‘from time to time you know you’re going on another bender’ echo other lines from the album such as ‘the kind of place where people go to drink away their gloom’, all of which attest to a pretty depressed end of the party mood, as well as corroborating Albarn’s suggestion that the band nearly had a breakdown during the making of the album (no doubt partially due to the ‘blizzard’ of cocaine that was blowing through London at that time).

The other line from the chorus ‘Wife-swapping is your future / You know that it would suit ya’ seems haunted by the intimation that serial infidelity was the inevitable consequence of anyone trying to stay in a long-term relationship while playing in a successful band (Albarn was still seeing Justine Frischmann at this point). Meanwhile the next couplet, ‘They’re stereotypes / There must be more to life’, combined with the overarching narrative of wife-swapping couples, could easily be a swipe at the open relationship of another infamous Britpop couple, Supergrass’ Danny Goffey and Pearl Lowe. If so, it’s small wonder that Albarn felt compelled to conceal the source material, because the whole thing drips with a sort of Rabelaisian moral disgust (and, to be fair, simultaneous fascination) with the sleazy demimonde in which they found themselves. Transferring it to a suburban setting distances it from the metropolitan excess, but if you take that out of the picture, I think the autobiography – and the repulsion – shine through.

(Also, I should absolutely not be using the world Rabelaisian, as I have never read any of his work. Ha!)

(Also also, Albarn’s repeated trick while performing of staring up at the heavens like a fallen angel reminds one of just how inescapably Blur dominated the zeitgeist at this point in time, and how welcome it was when they retreated to Iceland soon afterwards to record their difficult’ fifth album – during which time, presumably, one of their jobs was to put Albarn through an intensive non-angelically staring at the ceiling bootcamp.)