A great archive piece here, and much more recent that the 1960s videos I've featured in the past.
The song originally featured on the band's 1994 album Parklife, their third, which was very much the band's breakthrough album.
For a band so associated with the Britpop scene, and with London in particular, Blur were always a cleverer band than their contemporaries, a fact that has been borne out with band members' subsequent careers.
The original version featured some French lyrics sung by Stereolab's Laetitia Sadier, and a full French version featuring Blur vocalist Damon Albarn singing in French was featured as one of the extra tracks on the Park Life single release.
This version featuring Francoise Hardy was recorded the following year, and was released as a single in France and appeared on French editions of the band's 1995 album The Great Escape. The album went gold in France and had a far higher chart placing than Park Life.
I much prefer this version to the version that just featured Albarn on vocals, which was to these ears at least lacking in a certain je ne sais quoi.
The French connection for the song goes further, with the video based on the French film Last Year in Marienbad, the enigmatic 1961 film that is for many the archetypal vintage French art house film. While some see it as a byword for arthouse pretension and wilful obscurity, it's worth remembering that screenwriter Alain Robbe-Grillet was nominated for an Oscar for his work, not something that you might expect for such a highbrow film from the pen of one of France's most celebrated experimental authors.
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