Meaning of “Barbaric” by Blur

Blur is a rock band fronted by Damon Albarn, whom some readers would be more familiar with due to the animated-musical Gorillaz project. However in the case of Blur, Damon is backed by a steady team of real-life musicians in guitarist Graham Coxon, bassist Alex James and drummer Dave Rowntree. 

This quartet has been around since the late 1980s, thus predating the more-successful Gorillaz. Blur has also experienced some notable success throughout the years, such as all six of the studio LPs they dropped between 1994 and 2015 topping the UK Albums Chart.

On 21 July 2023, as a product of Warner Records and Parlophone, Blur’s ninth-studio album, “The Ballad of Darren”, came out. On that same day its third single, “Barbaric”, was also issued, with Blur having debuted the tune, via London’s BBC Radio Theatre, on July 18^th. This song was individually written by the members of the band, and its producer is James Ellis Ford.

The Lyrics of “Barbaric”

This is a true rock song in a manner of speaking, in that the vocalist doesn’t really burden himself with making all of the featured metaphors easily understandable. But luckily, in attempting to derive a meaning from “Barbaric”, there is a mildly-detailed explanation Albarn provided on record.

The most-discernible part of this song is the chorus, where the singer gets to noting that has “lost the feeling that he thought he’d never lose’. In explaining this piece, Damon elucidated that could be either “a good or bad thing”. 

As he further explained, “it can be about a lost love, or it can be about getting rid of your depression suddenly and unexpectedly”. So that would mean that as far as the chorus of “Barbaric” is concerned, it’s up to the listener to place a value judgment on what “feeling” the vocalist is alluding to.

“I have lost the feeling that I thought I’d never lose
Now where am I going?
At what cost, the feeling that I thought I’d never lose
It is barbaric”

That said, Albarn also revealed that this piece is based on a real-life event, one particularly “lonely Christmas” that he recently endured. The third verse in particular can be taken as pointing to such an experience, where we find the singer mentioning the likes of “winter darkness”, “lonely baubles on the plane tree”, and “the can of soup… heating up to ten”. 

But he also seems to close out the segment by alluding to what can be interpreted as a failed romantic relationship, which may then explain why he’s feeling so lonely during the holidays.

With that in mind, if Damon had not offered that interpretation mentioned a couple of paragraphs ago, it would also be simple to assume that the chorus is also based on a similar notion, i.e. the dissolution of a romance between the vocalist and addressee. After all, by using the term “barbaric” to describe all that’s going down, Damon imbues the thesis sentiment with a negative, not neutral, connotation.