You and Me

Album: Everyday Robots (2014)
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Songfacts®:

  • Damon Albarn shouts out the West London road of Westbourne Grove, which has been his manor for a number of years. It serves as the main road on the route of the annual Notting Hill Carnival in August. He told Uncut magazine: "Always after Carnival, there is this enormous residue of energy that hovers around for a few days. It's a Post-Carnival Apocalypse song!"
  • Albarn, who has long since been clean of drugs, addresses on this ballad his use of heroin during his Britpop days.

    "Tin foil and a lighter, the ship across
    Five days on, two days off."

    The Blur singer began his relationship with heroin at the height of Britpop. He acknowledged to Q magazine the role that the drug played in his artistic growth. "I hate talking about this because of my daughter, my family," he explained. "But, for me, it was incredibly creative [...] A combination of [heroin] and playing really simple, beautiful, repetitive s--t in Africa changed me completely as a musician. I found a sense of rhythm. I somehow managed to break out of something with my voice."

    Albarn also cautioned about the drug's risks. "It's a cruel, cruel thing," he told Uncut, adding that heroin "does turn you into a very isolated person and ultimately anything that you are truly dependent on is not good."
  • This is actually an amalgamation of two different songs, the first being titled "You" and the other being "Me."
  • The Moko Jumbie stilts walker is part of the carnival. In the song he's walking through London's All Saints Road and looking over the Brunel estate. Albarn explained to Uncut: "I've actually met the proper Moko Jumbie, when I went to Congo – he's represented in Carnival by the stilted people – that's a derivation of the Congolese Moko Jumbie spirit, a traditional tribal creature who travels around looking into people's houses."
  • The steel drums break in the middle of the song was played by a local London musician. Albarn explained on a Reddit AMA that "his pans represent to me the true ghost of carnival."

Comments: 1

  • Alec from Thames DittonThanks for that... very helpful explainer. Randomly I was typesetting a number 7 as superscript when he sang "seven high, they're rising" cheers
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