BLUR: The Great Escape 30th Anniversary Double Colored Vinyl Out December 12th

The Great Escape turns 30 this year and to celebrate, this seminal album from one of Britain’s most beloved bands will be available in a very special, brand new Half Speed Mastered Double-Disc Colored Vinyl Edition; out December 12th via Parlophone.

The Great Escape (30th Anniversary Edition) features the 15-track standard album (Disc One); as well as a collection of rare B-sides and bonus tracks (Disc Two) from the album era, several of which are previously unreleased on vinyl; available on yellow and turquoise vinyl and beautifully housed in a gatefold cover sleeve featuring all-new expanded artwork by artist and designer Tony Hung. 

Released to widespread critical acclaim on September 11th 1995, The Great Escape is blur’s fourth studio album, the follow-up to Damon Albarn, Graham Coxon, Alex James and Dave Rowntree’s international breakthrough release, Parklife (1994). Featuring a run of hit singles – “Country House,”  “The Universal,” “Stereotypes,” and “Charmless Man”- The Great Escape debuted at #1 on the UK Album Charts and went on to achieve triple Platinum status in the UK. The four singles have combined UK sales of over 1.8m, with over 61m YouTube views and combined global streams of 335m+ to date. 

A brand new 5-piece capsule collection of new bespoke merch by Tony Hung to mark the 30th anniversary of The Great Escape will launch on December 12th. To pre order, visit the blur store.

Since announcing their arrival with debut album Leisure in 1991, blur went on to revolutionise the sound of English popular music with seven successive UK #1 albums Parklife (1994), The Great Escape (1995), Blur (1997), 13 (1999), Think Tank (2003), The Magic Whip (2015) and The Ballad of Darren (2023) and a string of Top 10 singles, including two #1s with “Country House” and “Beetlebum,” helping to propel the band to mass popularity at home and abroad.

One of the biggest British bands of the last three decades, blur have released nine studio albums and collected ten NME Awards, six Q Awards, five BRIT Awards and an Ivor Novello Award, and played live to thousands of devoted fans across the globe. In 2010, the band released the Grammy-nominated documentary film No Distance Left To Run; with 1993’s Starshaped their first documentary release, a film beloved by fans to this day. Last year saw the release of the feature-length documentary blur: To The End, a film that depicts the most recent chapter in the band’s story, captured during the period in which they made a surprise – and emotional – return with their first record in 8 years. The Ballad of Darren, the latest #1 album from this most enduring of English bands, was released to critical acclaim on July 21st 2023, cementing blur’s position at the heart of British cultural life and influence for over three decades.