Blur’s run on Top of the Pops tracks the band from the baggy-edged singles of 1991 to the chart years that followed. This programme is a compilation of those studio appearances, not one night: There’s No Other Way and Bang sit beside Girls & Boys, Parklife and End of a Century, then Jubilee, Country House, Stereotypes, Charmless Man and Beetlebum. The clips were filmed at BBC Television Centre in London for the BBC’s weekly chart show, with the year on each song marking that appearance.
Damon Albarn, Graham Coxon, Alex James and Dave Rowntree play to the usual TOTP crowd and cameras, mime-and-live hybrid and all. Country House is here, from the 1995 chart battle, but it is one performance in the reel, not the whole show. Parklife, Girls & Boys and Beetlebum pull the set across Modern Life Is Rubbish, Parklife, The Great Escape and the turn into Blur. Taken together, the appearances are the television record of the band’s 1990s singles, from the first hits through the Britpop peak.