During the first week of Coachella 2024, Blur frontman Damon Albarn informed the crowd during their halfhearted "Girls & Boys" singalong, "You’re never seeing us again so you might as well f--king sing this."
The announcement felt a bit odd given the mixed reception from the audience and knowing that the band was contractually obligated to return for the festival's second weekend. So seeing them show up for weekend two was a bit reminiscent of George Costanza returning to his job after quitting the previous week.
The only difference, of course, is that Costanza's plan of action was to pretend that he'd never quit, whereas Albarn made it just as clear this time as he had during the first Coachella weekend that he'd meant what he'd said. Before the band's last song during weekend two, Albarn announced, "In the spirit of clarity and truth, this is probably our last gig."
"Right, I'm telling you, we're done, for real this time." Damon Albarn mans the megaphone during Blur's second weekend at Coachella 2024.
The fact that the band was doing Coachella at all was a bit of a surprise to most of the band's fans, since Albarn had already said back in December that Blur was basically done (sound familiar?).
"It is time to wrap up this campaign,” he said at the time. “It’s too much for me. It was the right thing to do and an immense honour to play these songs again, spend time with these guys, make an album, blah-blah-blah. I’m not saying I won’t do it again, it was a beautiful success, but I’m not dwelling on the past.”
"No, but seriously, folks..." Blur performs during weekend 2 of Coachella 2024.
In an interview with Los Angeles radio station KROQ just before taking the stage on the first weekend of Coachella, Albarn and bandmate Alex James explained how they'd ended up making the decision to perform at all, chalking it up to a combination of having limited time to decide and appreciating the merits of the festival.
Damon: “Well, we all got a phone call about 10 o’lock at night...”
Alex: “Which is not normally a good thing when it’s management calling at 10 o’clock at night. It’s usually trouble.”
Damon: “And it was, ‘Do you want to do Coachella this year? You’ve got five minutes to decide.’ And that was it. And I suppose we were just, like, ‘Well, okay, even though we said we weren’t gonna do anything more, we’ll do one more.’”
Alex: “This was just a wonderful opportunity. You know, the greatest show on earth. It’s the biggest show on the planet. If I wasn’t here, I’d have FOMO, I think.”
Here's the set list for Blur's second weekend at Coachella. The aforementioned announcement of their apparent dissolution took place at the beginning of "Tender," but - alas! - it wasn't captured on this video of the performance.
Set List:
‘St. Charles Square’
‘Popscene’
‘Trouble in the Message Centre’
‘Beetlebum’
‘Goodbye Albert’
‘Trimm Trabb’
‘Out of Time’
‘Bird Song’
‘Death of a Party’
‘Girls & Boys’
‘Song 2’‘
The Narcissist’
‘Tender’
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