Parklife

Albarn had said in 1990 that the band's third album would make them the defining English group of the decade, adding that he intended to write it in 1994. Money pressure sent them back into the studio quickly with Stephen Street, and the sessions were fast apart from This Is a Low. Albarn described the record as a loosely linked concept album about a mystical lager-eater and cited Martin Amis's London Fields. Its working title was London, and the cover shows greyhound racing. It was later chosen for Royal Mail's 2010 Classic Album Cover stamps.

Parklife reached number one in the UK, spent 90 weeks on the chart and sold just over a million copies there, certified 4x Platinum. It was nominated for the 1994 Mercury Prize, losing to M People, and at the 1995 Brit Awards Blur won four prizes including Best British Album. NME's Johnny Dee called it a great pop record, and AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine an epoch-defining one. Christgau liked only Girls & Boys. Pitchfork ranked it 54th on its 1990s list in 2003 and second on its Britpop list in 2017.