![\"Blur](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Blur-Damon-Albarn-Graham-Coxon-Alex-James-Dave-Roundtree-Far-Out-Magazine-1140x855.jpg\")
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(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy)<\/p>\n
Tue 5 August 2025 10:00, UK <\/p>\n
There are zero studies to back this claim, and no responsible person would finance one, but I\u2019m going to go ahead and say that most Oasis fans are \u201cdog people\u201d and most Blur<\/a> fans are \u201ccat people\u201d. <\/p>\n This is not to suggest that these former Britpop rivals or their fan bases are as diametrically opposed as the old narratives would have you believe.\u00a0<\/p>\n Sure, there are some oft-discussed dividing lines along class, geography, fashion, and more, but really, the reason Oasis ultimately won \u201cthe war\u201d<\/a>, as Damon Albarn acknowledged, is that people will always forgive a bad dog. Pooches are lovable, predictable, sporty, and usually give you the positive attention you want, so much so that you don\u2019t even mind all the barking, slobbering, and shit-picking. <\/p>\n Cats, by contrast\u2014while certainly cute and cuddly in their own right\u2014are less inclined to win back the people who already fear or dislike them. They\u2019re not gonna fill a concert set exclusively with big guitar hooks and sing-along choruses. Instead, they\u2019re probably gonna bring a harpsichord on stage, and perhaps some congas, a melodion, an omnichord, and a zither. They will show you their bellies, then claw you when you don\u2019t know the words to \u2018Girls & Boys\u2019.<\/p>\n Maybe I\u2019m mixing up the metaphor a bit here. The guys in Blur aren\u2019t really that feline-ish themselves, but as Graham Coxon was explaining even way back in 1994, they always enjoyed the element of surprise\u2014letting their songs jump out from behind a sofa and attack the listener\u2019s ankles from time to time. And for the people who respected that sort of independent spirit, it was a winning formula.<\/p>\n \u201cYeah, that\u2019s what we wanted,\u201d a 25-year-old Coxon told The Rocket in Seattle, referring to the tracks on Blur\u2019s third album, Parklife. \u201cWe wanted these songs to roll uncomfortably into the next; for each song to be its own world. I suppose that\u2019s the sound of Blur.\u201d<\/p>\n In the same interview, conducted at a time when the American press were still figuring out what this intriguing young pop band was all about, Coxon was asked about the then-recent remix of \u2018Girls & Boys\u2019 by Pet Shop Boys\u2014a group presumably happy to work with dogs and cats alike.<\/p>\n \u201cThey asked us if they could have a go at it without being paid or anything,\u201d Coxon said, \u201cAnd we said, \u2018yeah, go on\u2019\u2026\u00a0We wanted [\u2018Girls & Boys\u2019] to be a football hooligan chant, but quite camp. We made it as camp as we could, and [Pet Shop Boys] took it even more to the camp side. So it turned really [into a] gay club [song], which is really cool, \u2018cause we wanted football hooligans, cabbies, grannies and a great cross-section of people<\/a> to appreciate it. And I suppose that\u2019s why it\u2019s done so well.\u201d<\/p>\n For all the words used to describe the Gallagher brothers and the music of Oasis in the mid-1990s, \u201ccamp\u201d was rarely, if ever, one of them. Blur\u2019s comparative willingness to go more in that direction, despite their own penchant for a football chant, didn\u2019t necessarily make them wildly unique for the time period, but it might have created a subtle line in the sand. A separation of the cats and the dogs at the top of the Britpop food chain. Whether their fans were hipsters, grandmas, or cabbies, the potentially confusing mash-up of football hooliganism and camp club pop was generally embraced without judgment; emblematic of a cat owner\u2019s patience.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s our Blur,\u201d they all said, \u201cThey\u2019re not gonna play fetch and they won\u2019t respond to their own name, but when you get to know them, it\u2019s soooo rewarding.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy) Tue 5 August 2025 10:00, UK There are zero studies to back this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":319897,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3936],"tags":[96741,77,269,116048,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-319896","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-blur","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-music","11":"tag-pet-shop-boys","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114976370897246037","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=319896"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319896\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/319897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=319896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=319896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=319896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}