BREAKFAST OF BANALITY 4: BLUR – Coffee And T(ea)V
B-b-but – says you the foolish music lover – the song is just called Coffee And TV. Well yes, but inherent in this clever word playing title is the contrast between Coffee (a breakfast drink), Tea (another quintissentially English breakfast drink) and TV (a piece of electrical equipment of which there is a banal genre called Breakfast TV). This juxtaposition of Tea and TV as both beverage opposites and epistimological opposites of Coffee illustrates the not only the Americanisation of Britain (a perenial theme in Blur songs) but also the choices we have to make as soon as we get up.
Either that or its all art-school wank. Hmm, where did Blur meet again. Still we can give the the benefit of the doubt and examine some of the lyrics:
‘Do you feel like a chainstore,
Practically floored”.
Yet again this is ripe for disection, Albarn is playing on the different meanings on the word floored. Firstly he is looking at floored as the phenomena of having a floor. Secondly though he is using the somewhat archaic parlance taken from boxing to knock someone out, or by extension to surprise them. He also gets a bonus meaning in here too – floored being a phoneme of flawed. And if you examine the chainstore metaphor we yet again are presented with the idea of bland, faceless modernity and creeping Americanisation.
Or is it infact just a rubbish pun? After can one feel like a chainstore really? No – a chainstore is a building without feelings so this is just a silly play on words which doesn’t even scan very well. A pile of toss with pretensions for high art but the tune of sixties soap powder jungle. There is only one thing worse than being stupid Mr Albarn, and that is being stupid and thinking that you are clever.