User:Indopug/sandbox

Background

Blur's baggy-inspired debut album Leisure (1991) was a UK Top 10-charting record that, according to the NME, made the band the "acceptable pretty face of a whole clump of bands that have emerged since the whole Manchester thing started to run out of steam". However, as the baggy scene soon began to fade, The Guardianwrote that they were "[s]wiftly exposed as bogus trend-hoppers, [and] they duly caught the wrath of the Madchester backlash". Following their fall from public favour, the group found in early 1992 that they were £60,000 in debt, mainly due to mismanagement. Blur hired new manager Chris Morrison, who quickly staved off the threat of bankruptcy by raising money and assuring creditors. To further recoup losses, the band were sent by their record label Food on the Rollercoaster Tour of Britain along with three indie bands. To coincide with the start of the tour, Blur released the "Popscene" single; the new release showcased a significant change in musical direction, as the quartet traded their shoegaze-derived sound for one influenced by 60s British guitar pop. However, the single failed to break into the Top 30 which further diminished Blur's profile in Britain.

In May 1992 Blur embarked on a 44-date tour of the United States, their second visit to the country in six months. Dismayed by American audiences' infatuation with grunge and the lacklustre response to their music, the group frequently drank, and members often broke into fist-fights with one another. Homesick, the tour "instilled in the band a contempt for everything American", David Cavanagh later wrote; frontman Damon Albarn, who "started to miss really simple things [about England]", listened to a tape of the English pop group the Kinks throughout the tour. Upon their return to England, the group discovered that the attention of the music press had shifted to Suede. The newcomers' success displeased Blur who, in Cavanagh's words, "were inclined to feel that every record Suede sold was an affront to human decency". After many poor live shows, which Blur members often performed while drunk—in particular one at a 1992 gig that featured a well-received performance by Suede on the same bill—Blur were in danger of being dropped by Food.