Charting at number five on the UK Singles Chart, "Girls & Boys" was Blur's first top-five hit and their most successful single until "Country House" reached number one the following year.[7] In the United States, the track reached number 59 on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart and number four on the BillboardModern Rock Tracks chart. Kevin Godley produced the music video for the song. "Girls & Boys" was named single of the year by NME and Melody Maker and was nominated for best song at the MTV Europe Music Awards.[8][9][10]
Composition
"Girls & Boys"? Four notes. And the chorus is "Boys, Girls, Love". That's quite a universal message, isn't it?
Damon Albarn was inspired to write the song while on holiday in Magaluf, Spain, with then-girlfriend Justine Frischmann, lead singer of Elastica. According to Albarn, the city had "really tacky Essexnightclubs" and a rampant sexual scene among visitors, with "All these blokes and all these girls meeting at the watering hole and then just copulating. There's no morality involved, I'm not saying it should or shouldn't happen." The music has a convergence of various pop and dance styles, summed up by bassist Alex James as "Disco drums, nasty guitars and Duran Duran bass."[11] Drummer Dave Rowntree admitted that he is not playing on the track, being replaced by a drum machine he programmed. He said it was his favourite song on Blur: The Best Of (2000) because he "isn't really in it. It's cool not being in your own song."[12] The vocals were recorded with a demo featuring only the keyboards.[13] This song is written in the key of G minor.[14]
Release
Producer Stephen Street felt that while "Girls & Boys" was not like Blur's previous songs, "I thought it would be Top 5 – it was so downright basic. I felt the way I had when I produced the Smiths: that as long as Morrissey was singing on it, it would be the Smiths. It was the same with Blur: they could put their hands to anything, and it would still sound like Blur."[15] The song indeed reached number five on the UK Singles Chart, Blur's first foray into the top 5. Despite the band having big expectations for the single, guitarist Graham Coxon said "going top five was a bit of a shocker", and Albarn confessed to having his first panic attack shortly after the single entered the charts.[11]
Critical reception
AllMusic editor Stephen Thomas Erlewine described "Girls & Boys" as "undeniably catchy" and "one of the best (songs) Blur ever recorded", praising the band for making the song "feel exactly like Eurotrash", and stating that the chorus was "an absolutely devastating put-down of '90s gender-bending, where even ambi-sexuals didn't know whose fantasy they were fulfilling."[16]Larry Flick from Billboard wrote, "Alternative band takes a detour into clubland with an amusing, word-twisting ditty fleshed out with a trance-like synth energy and a hard, syncopated beat, courtesy of the Pet Shop Boys. Way-hip single's primary selling point is the brain-numbing refrain "girls who want boys who like boys to be girls who do boys like they're girls who do girls like they're boys." Try saying that three times fast. A good bet for dancefloor action, track should also get a crack at pop/crossover radio."[17]
Troy J. Augusto from Cash Box felt that "this track will light up dance floors first, with top-40 and even some experimental urban radio stations close behind. Not what we've come to expect from this quirky guitar-pop combo, which is part of the appeal here. And don't be surprised if RuPaul records a cover of this tasty gem."[18] Chuck Campbell from Knoxville News Sentinel wrote in his review of Parklife, "That great song, "Girls & Boys", is a twisting, slapping, lusty and instantly satisfying neo-disco track featuring Graham Coxon's teasing guitar and Damon Albarn's endearing vocals." He added, "Those who allow Parklife to continue playing after the conclusion of "Girls & Boys" will be disappointed initially, because nothing else on the album is so acutely infectious."[19] Steve Hochman from Los Angeles Times praised it as a "delightfully sly single".[20]
Jennifer Nine from Melody Maker said, "The one reprised here is the simultaneously fey and yobbish, clever and incredibly ugly sounds of Roxy Music/XTC/Gary Numan/anything with keyboards worked up to sound deliberately mechanical and ironic and unpleasant."[21] A reviewer from Music & Media viewed it as a "comical pastiche on '80s "new romantics"."[22] Martin Aston from Music Week gave it four out of five, complimenting it as "an irresistibly feisty pop bite and, as such, a probable Top 10 hit."[23] John Kilgo from The Network Forty described it as an "outstanding, infectious" tune.[24] Ian McCann from NME named it I'm as Surprised as You are, Sheer Chutzpah Single of the Week, adding, "The tongue lolling, deliberately camp-yobbish, mindless delivery and drooling lyrics defy categorisation. The rinky-disco beat is where Sparks meet Giorgio Moroder in his Son of My Father era, the phased guitar adds a rock noise to the mess, and that chorus! Surrender now, it will beat you in the end."[25]
Paul Evans from Rolling Stone felt it is "echoing '80s synth pop".[26]Sylvia Patterson from Smash Hits rated it four out of five, writing, "An organ-grinder of synth pings and guitar perks which sounds just like Elastica (whose singer Damon snogs). It is the sound of Now! (ie 1982) which was a good sound so that's all right. Sort of."[27] Another Smash Hits editor, Mark Sutherland, named it a "mad disco romp".[28] Rob Sheffield from Spin described the song as "a scrumptiously sleek Duran-gänger, sounding exactly like the Fab Five circa "Planet Earth" and "Hungry Like the Wolf"." He added, "Over a Eurodisco bass line, vocalist Damon Albarn croons about a beach full of teenagers stewing in their own auto-erotic juices: "Nothing is wasted / Only reproduced / You get nasty blisters / Du bist sehr schön, but we haven't been introduced"."[29] James Hunter from Vibe called it a "brilliant turn on new wave disco that boasts the year's best bent guitars. They bounce all this into a great English, um, blur."[30]
Music video
The accompanying music video for "Girls & Boys" was directed by English singer, songwriter, musician and music video director Kevin Godley. It features Blur performing the song against a bluescreen backdrop of documentary footage of people on Club 18-30 package holidays. Godley branded the video as "Page 3 rubbish", while Blur found it "perfect". The front cover of the single was taken from a pack of Durex condoms.[11]
Legacy
The song is included on two compilations albums: Blur: The Best Of (2000)[31] and Midlife: A Beginner's Guide to Blur (2009). In 2003, Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke confessed on BBC Radio 1 that he wished he had written the song, jokingly calling Blur "bastards" for writing it first.[32][33] In 2004, Q magazine featured the song in their list of "The 1010 Songs You Must Own".[34] In 2010, Pitchfork included the song at number 26 on their "Top 200 Tracks of the 90s".[35] In 2017, Stopera and Galindo from BuzzFeed remarked the song as "a great reminder of just how brilliant Blur was throughout the '90s."[36]
Pet Shop Boys, who provided a remix of the track for the single release, later covered the song during their Discovery tour in 1994. Their remix was also included on the Japanese version of the Parklife album. "Blurred" by Pianoman features the chorus (sampled from the Pet Shop Boys 12-inch remix) as its key lyric. The single peaked at number six on the UK Singles Chart in 1996. The song was covered by French singer Mélanie Pain on her 2009 album My Name. American alternative rock band the Get Up Kids performed a version of the song in July 2011 for The A.V. Club's A.V. Undercover series.[37]
^Pitchfork Staff (27 September 2022). "The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s". Pitchfork. Retrieved 21 October 2022. The nu-disco lead single from Blur's Parklife, "Girls & Boys" might have been a sonic outlier...
^Girls & Boys (Australian cassette single sleeve). Blur. Food Records, Parlophone. 1994. 8812504.{{cite AV media notes}}: CS1 maint: others in cite AV media (notes) (link)
^Girls & Boys (UK CD1 disc notes). Blur. Food Records, Parlophone. 1994. CDFOODS 47, 7243 8 81250 2 4.{{cite AV media notes}}: CS1 maint: others in cite AV media (notes) (link)
^Girls & Boys (UK CD2 disc notes). Blur. Food Records, Parlophone. 1994. CDFOOD 47, 7243 8 81251 2 3.{{cite AV media notes}}: CS1 maint: others in cite AV media (notes) (link)
^Girls & Boys (Australian CD single liner notes). Blur. Food Records, Parlophone. 1994. 8812512.{{cite AV media notes}}: CS1 maint: others in cite AV media (notes) (link)
^Girls & Boys (European CD single liner notes). Blur. Food Records, Parlophone. 1994. 7243 8 81261 2 0.{{cite AV media notes}}: CS1 maint: others in cite AV media (notes) (link)
^Girls & Boys (European & Australian remix CD single liner notes). Blur. Food Records, Parlophone. 1994. 7243 8813342 5.{{cite AV media notes}}: CS1 maint: others in cite AV media (notes) (link)
^Girls & Boys (US CD single liner notes). Blur. Food Records, SBK Records. 1994. K2-58155.{{cite AV media notes}}: CS1 maint: others in cite AV media (notes) (link)
^Girls & Boys (US cassette single sleeve). Blur. Food Records, SBK Records. 1994. 4KM-58155.{{cite AV media notes}}: CS1 maint: others in cite AV media (notes) (link)
^Girls & Boys (US 12-inch single vinyl disc). Blur. Food Records, SBK Records. 1994. Y-58155.{{cite AV media notes}}: CS1 maint: others in cite AV media (notes) (link)
^Girls & Boys (Japanese mini-CD single liner notes). Blur. Food Records, EMI Records. 1994. TODP-2455.{{cite AV media notes}}: CS1 maint: others in cite AV media (notes) (link)
