‘It’s all nonsense’: Damon Albarn gets pissed off at the Rolling Stones

Damon Albarn is an interviewee who doesn’t need much prodding to speak his mind, and recently, he did just that. In an interview with French magazine Les Inrockuptibles, the Blur frontman was asked what he thought of Hackney Diamonds, the Rolling Stones’ first studio album in 18 years.

Today Hackney is a gentrified, overpriced area of London, but that wasn’t always the case. The stadium and the Olympic Village, built for the 2012 Olympics, helped rehabilitate the east end neighborhood, which had 200,000 inhabitants and an unemployment rate double the country’s average in 2008. Hackney was London’s fourth most dangerous district and the capital’s leading site of armed robberies. Local slang called the broken glass from burglarized store windows Hackney diamonds. But all that is a far cry from today’s Hackney, which is a green, slow living area where housing prices have skyrocketed.

Mick Jagger and company held the album launch there. They filled the area with posters and paraphernalia. The Rolling Stones published an advertisement for a fake window repair company called Hackney Diamonds founded in 1962 —the year the band started— in a local newspaper, the Hackney Gazette. In September they appeared for an interview on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon from the stage of the Hackney Empire, a venue built in 1901 that is the flagship of live music in the area.

All of that angered Damon Albarn. “This really annoyed me… because my family lives in Hackney,” he said. “The way they showed up at the Hackney Empire venue [for an album release event] really pissed me off. They’ve never [done] a thing in Hackney, they’ve never played there, never contributed to anything. They just showed up. It’s all nonsense.”

Albarn also didn’t like the video for the album’s first single, Angry, which stars Euphoria actress Sydney Sweeney. “I listened to their new song and watched this horrible music video showing them at different stages of their lives on billboards. And this young woman [was] objectified. What the hell is this? There’s something completely disconnected,” he reasoned.

Asked if he could see himself in his 80s, appearing on billboards with photos of glorious moments from his own past, he replied, “I did all sorts of things, whereas they’ve never been anything other than The Rolling Stones.” He added, “I love the idea of devoting your life to one thing, in search of the sublime. But the truth is, they’ve [become] worse. Worse at persisting to stay themselves. That’s something I don’t understand. Making exactly the same music but not that good. There must be no joy in doing something like this.”

That wasn’t the first time the Blur singer has taken a swipe at someone in the press. In 2022, Albarn criticized Taylor Swift in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, claiming that she did not compose her songs. However, on that occasion he gave in when Swift herself pointed out that it was a lie. He acknowledged his mistake in the controversy; Robbie Williams and Gabriel Boric, the president of Chile, both intervened on Swift’s behalf.

In the 1990s, the dispute between Albarn’s group and Oasis was legendary. The rivalry was promoted by the press and both bands’ record companies, which saw the feud as an opportunity to increase sales. Albarn also had problems with Suede’s Brett Anderson, although in that case the hatred was mutual. Anderson was the ex-boyfriend of Elastica frontwoman Justine Frischmann, who dated Albarn after leaving Anderson. At the time, he even took out his anger on another band, Skunk Anansie. “Damon Albarn hated us. I have no fucking idea what his problem was,” Skin, the lead singer of that band, said a year ago.

Albarn’s not even happy about the reunion of his old band. Blur, the group with which he became famous in the nineties, reunited this year for a massive tour and a new album, The Ballad of Darren. Albarn says that he is focused on the new album for another of his bands: Gorillaz. He’s now composing without fighting with anyone. For the time being.

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