Ong Ong
by Blur

Album: The Magic Whip (2015)
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Songfacts®:

  • Guitarist Graham Coxon told NME about this sing-a-long tune: "It's a bit of a knees up. When Damon (Albarn) did the lyrics, and I went to listen to the vocal he said to me, 'I've gone a bit populist with this one,' but there's not an awful lot you can do with a song like that: it kind of has to be a beers-in-the-air sing-along."

    "The 'I wanna be with you' picks reminds me of being on a beach and there's palm trees swaying, the colors are a bit much, you're feeling a little bit sick, there's ice cream everywhere and some rock stars scattered around getting sunburnt," he added. "It's like some kind of weird advert for the Bahamas. I really like it, but sometimes a song will ask some weird stuff of you – stuff that you might not necessarily like doing, but the song has told you to do it. And so you have to obey!"
  • Blur performed the song on television for the first time during the April 14, 2015 episode of Later… with Jools Holland.
  • The song's music video was directed by British-born Chinese artist Tony Hung and was inspired by his memories of retro video games. The narrative finds the four Blur members as characters from a fictional game inspired by The Magic Whip album. The clip features Damon Albarn dressed up as Mr. Cream, the ice cream cone depicted on the CD cover, while Graham Coxon, Alex James and Dave Rowntree portray Mr. Brown, Mr. Red and Mr. Black respectively.

    The clip also references a number of iconic '80s video games, including Mario, Popeye, Ms. Pac-Man and Kirby's Adventure.

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