The Best (The Best Of Blur - Blur)

Member Name: Dr_Evil

Product:	The Best Of Blur - Blur
Date:	14/11/00 (124 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: All of Blur's hits on one great CD

Disadvantages: Only one new track

Whether you have all of Blurs previous albums or none 'Blur: The Best of' is an essential purchase. Covering a period of 10 years this CD contains all of Blurs hits from 'She's So High' to their latest hit 'Music is my Radar'.

While many groups seem to release 'greatest hits' albums after only a couple of albums, in Blur's case they have done enough and had enough hits for a 'best of' album to be worthwhile. It is amazing to think that Blur have now released six studio albums (Leisure, Modern Life is Rubbish, Parklife, The Great Escape, Blur and '13') and this album containing tracks from all six gives you the opportunity to see how Blur have developed over the years.

The order of the tracks on the album is not chronological and although their most recent song 'Music is my Radar' is the final track, their earliest tracks are hidden away in the middle. Whether this is a deliberate ploy to give the album a stronger start is open to debate but all the same this minor gripe does not detract from the ablum as a whole. Notably only 'She's so High', 'There's No Other Way' and 'For Tomorrow' appear from their first two albums.

The album opens with the upbeat 'Beetlebum' and, my favourite Blur song, 'Song 2' predictably the second track on the album both from the Blur album. Perhaps unsurprisingly 'The Best Of' features five tracks from 1994's 'Parklife' album, the album that launched Blur's career and started the Brit-Pop phenomenon. From the singalong classics 'Girls and Boys' and 'Parklife' to the beautiful ballads 'This is a Low' and another of my favourites, 'To the End' this was undoubtedly Blur at their very best.

'The Best Of' contains three tracks from each of Blur's next three albums including, 'Country House', the song that sparked their war
with Oasis, 'The Universal' and 'Charmless Man' from 1995's 'The Great Escape'. From their Blur changed direction and the tracks from their self-titled fifth album showed a new maturity to the band. This continued with last years '13' which included my least favourite song on this album, 'Tender', the cheery 'Coffee and TV' and the more obscure 'No Distance Left to Run'.

All in all it really is hard to fault this album as it contains hit after hit, and with the exception of 'Tender', I really like every track on the CD.

The limited edition version of the album comes with a bonus 10 track live CD recorded at Wembley Arena in December 1999. Although only 'Stereotypes' and 'M.O.R' don't feature on the main CD this is a great CD for Blur fans and adds significantly to the value of the package as a whole.

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