Blur Returning for Coachella Weekend 2, Despite Damon Albarns Frustration With Crowd; Kid C

As Blur performed Saturday night on the Coachella main stage ahead of No Doubt, they found themselves in front of a relatively unresponsive crowd, especially during their 1994 hit “Girls & Boys.”

“You’re never seeing us again, so you might as well fucking sing it,” a clearly frustrated frontman Damon Albarn said after the crowd’s uninspired response during multiple call and response attempts.

Segments of the internet soon erupted with confused reactions — were they about to vacate the stage? Were they splitting up again? Were they so frustrated that they were pulling a Frank Ocean and not returning for weekend two?

Or, more likely, was it a not-out-of-character act of spontaneous anger from a 56-year-old rock star who’d played two nights at London’s Wembley Stadium to 90,000 screaming fans last summer — who’d screamed the lyrics to “Girls & Boys” almost louder than Albarn could sing them — and apparently didn’t realize that much of the Coachella audience was half his age and did not grow up on such ’90s Britpop classics as “Popscene,” “Tender,” “Coffee & TV,” “The Universal,” “Country House” and “For Tomorrow” (although they probably knew the “Whoo-hoo!” of the group’s biggest hit, “Song 2”).

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It appears the latter is the case — the group is on the schedule for Coachella’s weekend two in the same Saturday slot. Veteran rapper Kid Cudi has been added to the lineup as well, which is otherwise unchanged from weekend one.

Contacted by Variety last Sunday, reps for the group had no comment on Albarn’s statements, although the band later posted a April 14 tweet thanking the festival.

Coachella, thank you pic.twitter.com/fzxQI7xMB2

— blur (@blurofficial) April 14, 2024

However, Albarn’s comment may come true after this coming weekend. Blur, which split in the early 2000s but has reformed several times in a sort of rotation with Albarn’s multiple other projects such as Gorillaz and Rocket Juice & the Moon, has no other tour dates scheduled. In fact, the Coachella dates (and a warm-up show in Pomona, Calif. last week) were outliers; the group last performed in November. The band released its most recent album, “The Ballad of Darren,” last July, which topped the U.K. charts.

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Jenniffer Sheldon

Update: 2024-07-29

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