Parklife

This article is about the 1994 studio album by Blur. For its title track, see Parklife (song). For the annual music festival in Manchester, England, see Parklife (festival).
For other uses, see Parklife (disambiguation).

Parklife
Studio album by
Blur
Released25 April 1994
RecordedAugust 1993 – February 1994
Studio
Genre
Length52:40
LabelFood
Producer
Blur chronology
Modern Life Is Rubbish
(1993) 		Parklife
(1994) 		The Great Escape
(1995)
Singles from Parklife
  1. "Girls & Boys"
    Released: 8 March 1994[1]
  2. "To the End"
    Released: 30 May 1994[2]
  3. "Parklife"
    Released: 22 August 1994[3]
  4. "End of a Century"
    Released: 7 November 1994[4]
  5. "Tracy Jacks"
    Released: December 1994 (US only)

Parklife is the third studio album by the English rock band Blur, released on 25 April 1994, by Food Records. After moderate sales for their previous album Modern Life Is Rubbish (1993), Parklife returned Blur to prominence in the UK, helped by its four hit singles: "Girls & Boys", "To the End", the title track and "End of a Century".

Certified four times platinum in the United Kingdom by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI),[5] the album came to define the emerging Britpop scene in the year following its release, along with the album Definitely Maybe by future rivals Oasis. Britpop in turn would form the backbone of the broader Cool Britannia movement. Parklife therefore has attained a cultural significance above and beyond its considerable sales and critical acclaim, cementing its status as a landmark in British rock music.[6]

In 2010, Parklife was one of ten album covers from British artists commemorated on a UK postage stamp issued by the Royal Mail.[7][8] In 2015, Spin included the album in their list of "The 300 Best Albums of 1985–2014".[9] Rolling Stone magazine ranked the album number 438 in its 2020 list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time".[10]

  1. ^ "Single Releases". Music Week. 5 March 1994. p. 21.
  2. ^ "Single Releases". Music Week. 28 May 1994. p. 25. Misprinted as 29 May on source.
  3. ^ "This how Phil Daniels got paid for Blur's Parklife single..." Radio X. 14 August 2020. Retrieved 6 March 2022.
  4. ^ "Single Releases". Music Week. 5 November 1994. p. 23.
  5. ^ "Damon Albarn on Blur's Parklife, 20 years on". BBC News. 26 April 2014. Retrieved 25 October 2016.
  6. ^ McMillan, Graeme (28 April 2014). "Parklife Is the Cornerstone of Britpop, But It Shouldn't Be". Time. Retrieved 25 January 2021. [Parklife] . . . was also the album many people point to as Ground Zero for what soon became known as Britpop. . . . "Cool Britannia" was a phrase uttered without sarcasm. Blur, and the Parklife album in particular, were the heart of that.
  7. ^ "Royal Mail unveil classic album cover stamps". The Independent. Retrieved 23 September 2022.
  8. ^ "Royal Mail puts classic albums on to stamps". The Guardian. Retrieved 23 September 2022.
  9. ^ "The 300 best albums of the past 30 years(1985-2014)". Spin. 11 May 2015. Retrieved 14 March 2021.
  10. ^ Cite error: The named reference :0 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).