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From Blur to Sleeper: Artists criticise Britpop misogyny

In February 1998, a few months after completing the tour, Blur released Bustin' + Dronin' for the Japanese market. The album is a collection of Blur songs remixed by artists such as Thurston Moore, William Orbit and Moby. Among the tracks, the band were most impressed by Orbit's effort and enlisted him to replace Street as producer for their next album, citing a need to approach the recording process from a fresh perspective.

Blur's musical style has been described as Britpop, indie rock, alternative rock, art pop, art rock, and pop rock. The band's seventh studio album Think Tank moved into more of an electronic sound. Some of the band's influences include, David Bowie, Bobby Womack, William Onyeabor, the B-52's, the Kinks, Radiohead, Pink Floyd, the Jam and Depeche Mode. Released in March 1999, Blur's sixth studio album 13 saw them drift still further away from their Britpop-era attitude and sound. Orbit's production style allowed for more jamming, and incorporated a "variety of emotions, atmospheres, words and sounds" into the mix. 13 was creatively dominated by Coxon, who "was simply allowed to do whatever he chose, unedited", by Orbit.

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Alex James later summarised, "After being the People's Hero, Damon was the People's Prick for a short period ... basically, he was a loser – very publicly." During the two-month American tour, the band became increasingly unhappy, often venting frustrations on each other, leading to several physical confrontations. After a poor performance at a 1992 gig that featured a well-received set by Suede on the same bill, Blur were in danger of being dropped by Food. By that time, Blur had undergone an ideological and image shift intended to celebrate their English heritage in contrast to the popularity of American grunge bands like Nirvana. Although sceptical of Albarn's new manifesto for Blur, Balfe gave assent for the band's choice of Andy Partridge to produce their follow-up to Leisure.

Following a stylistic change influenced by English guitar pop groups such as the Kinks, the Beatles and XTC, Blur released Modern Life Is Rubbish , Parklife and The Great Escape . As a result, the band helped to popularise the Britpop genre and achieved mass popularity in the UK, aided by a chart battle with rival band Oasis in 1995 dubbed "The Battle of Britpop". In February 2012, Blur were awarded the Outstanding Contribution to Music award at the 2012 Brit Awards. Later that month, Albarn and Coxon premiered a new track together live, "Under the Westway".

Blur began working on their fourth album The Great Escape at the start of 1995. Building upon the band's previous two albums, Albarn's lyrics for the album consisted of several third-person narratives. Partly due to increasing antagonisms between the groups, Blur and Oasis released their new singles on the same day, an event the NME called "The British Heavyweight Championship". The debate over which band would top the British singles chart became a media phenomenon, and Albarn appeared on the News at Ten. At the end of the week, "Country House" ultimately outsold Oasis' "Roll With It" by 274,000 copies to 216,000, becoming Blur's first number one single.

The band were once hailed as one of the vanguards of the scene, with the front cover of April 1993’s issue ofSelectmagazine featuring Anderson backed by a Union Jack, an iconic moment in the genre’s story. Every umbrella term coined to represent a movement eventually gets denigrated by those once closely involved. Whether it be the current crop of post-punk acts or those working within nu-metal, the instances of this are numerous. While all ‘scenes’ have their own stories, none are as polarising asBritpop. Lots of formerly strictly delineated categories get blurred together, and one of them is narrative and marketing, story and advertising. There's not a lot to say about it other than it seems to blur the boundaries between life and art.