Blur Reunite for First New Song in Six Years

To coincide with Record Store Day, the original Blur lineup reunited to release their first new song in over six years. "Fool's Day" was available in U.K. record shops as a limited-edition 7", but to appease their global fan base, the Britpop icons have also offered up the new track as a free download on their official website. "To avoid fans having to illegally obtain an inferior copy of this track from pirate sites, we have made it freely available," Blur manager Chris Morrison wrote on the band's site.

As Rolling Stone previously reported, Blur convened in the studio earlier this month to record "Fool's Day" specifically for Record Store Day. The song is the first to feature all four members of Blur — Albarn, bassist Alex James, drummer Dave Rowntree and guitarist Graham Coxon — since the band's 2003 album Think Tank. In exchange for your e-mail address, you can download "Fool's Day" as either an MP3 or a high-quality WAV file. The uncompressed WAV file features the entire version of "Fool's Day," complete with Coxon's minute-long guitar solo, while the MP3 cuts off just before the 2:30 mark.

Musically, "Fool's Day" revisits the iconic Britpop of Parklife and Blur before the quartet ventured into a more experimental direction with 1999's melancholic 13 and electronic-oriented Think Tank. It's unclear whether this track is just a one-off single or the first step in the restart of Blur's recording career, but "Fool's Day" is the sound of Blur not missing a beat despite six years out of the studio.

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Song Stories

“All Along the Watchtower”

The Jimi Hendrix Experience | 1968

Jimi Hendrix got hold of Bob Dylan's early John Wesley Harding tapes and in late 1967 recorded a version of "All Along the Watchtower" with the Experience in London. Dissatisfied with that first development, Hendrix brought those tapes with him to New York in early 1968 when he began work on Electric Ladyland. Eddie Kramer, Hendrix's engineer at the time, told Rolling Stone that Hendrix "was still looked upon by his basically white audience as the mammoth black guitar hero. There was a constant fight within him to expand himself." Hendrix's successful take on Dylan's work has long been recognized by the songwriter. "I liked Jimi Hendrix's record of this and ever since he died I've been doing it that way," Dylan wrote in the liner notes to his Biograph box set. "Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it's a tribute to him in some kind of way."

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