Wiki
-
Release Date
1990
-
Length
12 tracks
Leisure is the debut studio album by the English rock band Blur, released in August 1991 by record label Food. The album peaked at number 7 in the UK Albums Chart and was certified Gold in the UK.
Three singles were released from Leisure: She’s So High, There's No Other Way, and Bang. In 1996, Sing was included on the soundtrack to the film Trainspotting.
Leisure received mixed reviews from the British music press. A highly enthusiastic David Cavanagh wrote in Select magazine that "The four Blur boys have guaranteed themselves a hefty leg-up in the being-taken-seriously stakes with the thrills they've carved into the grooves of Leisure." He concluded that "Leisure, in short, is one of those happy occasions when the hype is dead right." Q magazine's Paul Davies rated the album four out of five stars, and felt it fulfilled the early promise Blur showcased: "This latest bunch of floppy-fringed pop cadets in baggy clothing should consummate their burgeoning pop romance in fine style", Davies elaborated, "for Leisure is a substantially stocked treasure-chest of hit singles just waiting to happen." Alexis Petridis however, stated that "on the evidence of this album, they don't appear to know what they're doing and as a result make appalling mistakes all over the place". He also described the lyrics as "bad".
In a 2007 interview, lead singer Damon Albarn expressed distaste for the album, describing it as "awful" and being one of the two "bad records" he has made in his career (the other being Blur album The Great Escape). Albarn further expanded on the album's recording in 2014, explaining that "it wasn't a particularly happy experience" and suggested the band were too keen to please the record label by capitalising on a sound that was popular at the time. The band rarely played tracks from the album live in later tours, with only the singles "There's No Other Way" and "She's So High" being frequently included in setlists.
As part of the album's 21st anniversary, Leisure was remastered and reissued along with the band's other studio albums on 30 July 2012. The album was reissued a second time, on coloured vinyl, on August 26, 2016.
Album descriptions on Last.fm are editable by everyone. Feel free to contribute!
All user-contributed text on this page is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply.
