Parklife is overplayed. So says the man who co-wrote it and came up with its distinctive riff: Graham Coxon.
The Blur guitarist has been talking to the Guardian about his ‘honest playlist’ and after revealing that his go-to karaoke song is Elton John’s Blue Eyes, went off at a tangent about the Britpop hit.
“I saw a clip of Robbie Williams and Danny Dyer doing Parklife," he says. "It’s flipping bizarre, although I do like Danny Dyer. That song is overplayed now. People want to have a knees-up, like Knees Up Mother Brown or Roll Out the Barrel.”
He was referring to Williams’ Hyde Park show last summer during which he had a ‘90s section’. In addition to reprising Blur’s 1994 hit with Dyer, the ex-Take That star duetted with Gaz Coombes of Supergrass on Alright and sang Oasis’s Don’t Look Back In Anger in between reminiscing about that sun-kissed era of hope and plenty.
Coxon’s other choices in the feature are certainly interesting. His nomination for ‘best song to play at a party’ is Donald Fagen’s sleek early '80s hit New Frontier: “I have to have it on four times in a row. It’s got sinister, sarcastic lyrics and an amazing groove.”
Meanwhile, he claims he can’t listen to anything by the Carpenters these days (other than Goodbye To Love). “The rest makes me feel as if I’ve injected acid and sugar,” he says.
He also claims he knows every word to Meatloaf’s Bat Out Of Hell and has recently become “obsessed” by Abba’s Lay All Your Love On Me. And the song he wants to be played at his funeral? “It was going to be I’m Your Man by Wham! but I don’t want people chuckling at my funeral. I want them to be in emotional agony. So Inheritance by Talk Talk.”
Coxon’s other band, The Waeve, start a UK tour tomorrow in Manchester at the Academy 2. They have a new EP, Eternal, out now too.
