For Christmas 2000, Santy brought me Blur: The Best Of. I’d put it on my list and looking back there are 3 clear reasons:

1. I was 8 and there was an ad on TV and Christmas was coming and I was very vulnerable to advertising at that age.
2. Song 2 was the theme song to FIFA 98 which I was obsessed with because I loved lists and was an odd little boy.
3. The album cover is fantastic.

It’s a great album and it had a profound impact on my little brain and inspired years of trying to emulate Alex James’ haircut. I misunderstood the idea of a greatest hits or best of album for years. I assumed that you couldn’t have a greatest hits if you were still making music. It seemed illogical. So I just assumed that Blur finished in the year 2000 and that was it and I still haven’t listened to anything from Think Tank which came out in 2003.

The thing about having a favourite album, especially in CD form, as a small fella, is that you’ll always listen to the first song the most. So Beetlebum became my favourite song. It had great distorted guitar. The vocals are quite lazy, almost a bit too cool which seemed very fucking important at the time. It was class. I was young. I was impressionable and I was obsessed.

You can listen to Beetlebum by Blur here.