Song of the Day: Blur “No Distance Left To Run”

Blur‘s deeply moving ballad “No Distance Left To Run” is something of a kiss-off farewell to Brit Pop movement. The band always had an impeccable ability to describe the end of eras. As a result, their ballads always seem to have an appropriately fin de siècle feel about them. “No Distance Left To Run” may be Blur’s very best song. The song is widely thought to be about the end of the relationship between Blur‘s singer, Damon Albarn and his longtime partner, Elastica front-woman, Justine Frischmann. Of the song, Albarn has said:

“It upsets me, that song. It upset me singing it. Doing that vocal upset me greatly. To sing that lyric I really had to accept that that was the end of something in my life. It’s amazing when you do have the guts to do that with your work, because it don’t half help you.”

You can hear that pain in his delivery of the song – lovely as it is. Given the internal turmoil within the Blur that soon followed the release of their record 13, (on which “No Distance Left To Run” can be found), the song can also be seen as a tribute to the end of the Graham Coxon era of the band, with Coxon acrimoniously leaving the group out during the recording sessions for their follow-up album Think Tank. While Frischmann and Albarn did not reunite, there is a happy ending to Albarn–Coxon story, however. After a long period of inactivity beginning in 2004, in which Coxon focused on his solo career and Albarn pursued a number of side projects, including Gorillaz, Mali Music and The Good, The Bad & The Queen, the two reunited (along with the rest of Blur) in 2008, including both a series of tours and the recording a new record in 2014.